Best Upholstery and Flooring for Homes with Pets

Two of the biggest challenges to decorating a home are children and pets. They’re much too precious to live without, but they’re also very hard on all sorts of surfaces and materials. But while kids can grow out of their most destructive phases, pets won’t necessarily change. You can train many pets not to scratch up or jump on furniture, but when humans fight against pets’ instincts, humans often lose the battle. We want to improve your chances of keeping your pet-filled home looking and smelling good! To help you do that, here are tips on choosing pet-friendly flooring materials and coverings and furniture upholstery fabrics.

Pet-Friendly Upholstery

Cats love to scratch, and dogs like to rest their paws on furniture and pull themselves up. They lie on floors and rarely wear slippers, so even tidy pets spread dust, hair, and daily dirt around. These qualities make them tough on upholstery. If you don’t want to train your pets to stay off your furniture, you’ll want upholstery fabrics that can stand up to dirty, sharp little feet.

When choosing upholstery textiles, look for fabric with the following features:

• Tight weave
• Smooth, even surface
• Moisture resistance
• Forgiving colors and patterns

Choose fabrics with a tight weave

When decorating homes with pets, remember that tightly woven fabrics resist claws better than more loosely woven fabric. Stiff woven fabrics like canvas and denim are especially good. They don’t let sharp claw tips slide between fibers nearly as easily as looser weaves like chenille, velvet, or tweed, or delicate fabrics like silk. 

Moisture resistance is important

Moisture wicks dirt and dust more deeply into fibers. This spreads stains and makes them harder to remove. Fabric that resists moisture keeps spills from absorbing and makes them easier to wipe up. Synthetics with a tight weave—like performance linen, faux suede, canvas, or denim—tend to be most moisture-resistant. To avoid synthetics made of petrochemicals, consider wool for fabrics and carpeting. The lanolin in wool gives it moderate moisture resistance.

Performance fabrics work well

Performance fabrics have a high proportion of synthetic (plastic-based) fibers to repel moisture and stains. To clean them, wipe them down with a clean damp rag. If you like pale fabrics, synthetics are your best option, since they’re least likely to stain. Purely cotton canvas or denim can repel liquids for a short time, but eventually will soak in. You can treat fabrics with spray-on water repellants, but their chemicals aggregate in the bloodstreams of humans and animals. Some repellant chemicals are carcinogenic or may be endocrine disruptors. I recommend against applying after-market waterproofing sprays to furniture or shoes, as was popular in past decades.

Microfiber performance fabrics like faux suede and performance velvet are softer. They may be less able to hold up to sharp claws. Their brushed surfaces may be more porous than performance linen, which has a flatter weave and is primarily polyester. Whatever fabric you choose when decorating a home that has pets, it should have a flat weave or cut fibers (like performance velvet), and no loops for claws to get caught in. Currently popular bouclé has a soft, nubbly feel because it has lots of looped fibers, which cats and dogs can pull and damage in a hurry. Bouclé tends to wear poorly compared to other fabrics.

Performance fabrics are practical, but since they’re synthetic, they’re made of fossil fuel-derived materials. They’re not sustainable the way natural materials are. They won’t biodegrade when eventually disposed of. If you choose one, choose a good quality product that will last a long time, so you’ll get as much use out of it as possible before it winds up in a landfill.

What about leather and plastic?

Leather and plastic upholstery can provide good, washable options for homes with pets. However, pets can and often do scratch or bite leather or plastic, leaving permanent scars, holes, or other marks.

If you have an older leather sofa or chair made of heavy leather that has creases and wear that you like, a few more little scratches probably won’t bother you much.

To keep leather seating looking its best, clean it regularly with a leather cream. This removes dirt and evens out water marks, light scratches, and small stains.

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For tips on ways to keep pets from scratching furniture, upholstery, and other furnishings, see our related article, When Pets Scratch Furniture and Floors.

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Flooring Options for Homes with Pets

Wood

Hard-surface floors can be washed, vacuumed, and mopped. This makes cleaning up messes easier and avoids lingering smells and stains. However, pet claws can easily scratch most hardwood floors. The damage done can be unsightly, and even detectable to the soles of your bare feet. If you have wood floors, you’ll want to make sure to trim your dogs’ or cats’ claws regularly. Every ten days to three weeks for cats, and every three to four weeks for dogs is good. If you’ve tried trimming claws and ended up bitten and swearing, you have a few options:

• Get a protective cover for your pet’s head (e.g., a muzzle) to keep it from biting you during claw trimming
• Swaddle your pet in a towel or blanket like a burrito and take out only one paw at a time
• Offer a favorite lickable treat like peanut butter or Churu paste during trimming time to distract pets
• Have a groomer or vet’s assistant trim your pet’s nails regularly
• Apply nail caps or claw covers to your pets’ claws and replace them about once a month

Even if you can’t trim often enough to keep your floors safe, you still need to trim pets’ nails a few times a year. This avoids painful ingrown claws, especially on indoor animals. Outdoor animals who regularly walk on sidewalks wear away the ends of their claws on concrete or asphalt. Indoor babies need your help. 

Ceramic

Maybe keeping your pets’ claws trimmed every few weeks is too hard for you and your pets. You might want to look at ceramic floors. These stand up to pets’ claws, and are easy to wash, sweep, and care for. Even if your pets have accidents, drag in random debris, or spill food and water, ceramic floors wash up in a jiffy. If you like the look of wood, you can even find ceramic floors with realistic woodgrain patterns.

One downside to ceramic is that claws and nails will click, click, click across it as they do on wood floors. Some folks find this annoying. The upside is that ceramic is simple to care for, and it provides a smooth surface that’s easier to maneuver than carpeting or rugs for people with walkers, wheelchairs, and crutches. Just choose a tile that has some texture to it so that pets and people don’t slip too easily as they walk or run across it.

Luxury vinyl flooring

Want the look of wood without worrying about scratching? Many newer “luxury vinyls” and vinyl plank flooring products have convincing woodgrain finishes and are scratch-resistant. These are easy to clean and care for, not too slippery, and hold up to heavy traffic. Vinyl floors are also affordable; they can be quicker and cheaper to install than wood or ceramic, are moisture-resistant, and don’t need special care like wood. They’re less likely to peel up than earlier generations of faux-wood plank flooring did.

Vinyl comes in a variety of patterns that mimic not just wood but also stone and tile. Also, vinyl flooring is softer on feet and dampens noise better than wood or ceramic. It doesn’t make as pronounced a clicking noise when tiny toes and claws walk across it. When choosing flooring for homes with pets, consider ways to deaden noises and avoid bad smells wherever possible. These background annoyances can really build up and cause discomfort and stress over time.

Wall-to-wall carpeting

One of the biggest challenges to keeping a clean, scratch-free, and sweet-smelling pet-filled home is wall-to-wall carpeting. Carpeting and the layer of padding below absorb urine, drool, feces, pet hair, dander, and whatever weird stuff your pet has rolled in. Even regular, deep steam cleaning can’t remove all traces of the debris or odor-causing spills. They usually make their way into the padding layer. You can’t just mop carpeting down or roll it up and toss it in the machine. So people in homes with pets often prefer flooring that resists moisture, doesn’t attract hold onto lint and hair, and is easy to clean up in place.

If you choose wall-to-wall flooring, avoid white, cream, or pale pastels. Even the cleanest people and pets will slowly create discolorations and tracks across this carpet, even if they don’t wear shoes inside. Dark carpeting shows pale hair and easily, but hides light spills or daily wear better.  Medium tones tend to be best at hiding wear.

In homes with pets, be wary of natural plant fibers like jute, sisal, and woven seagrass. Yes, they do make attractive, low-profile rugs. Sadly, they can’t stand up to dog and cat claws, which get caught in their wide weaves. Low, loop-pile carpets like Berbers and hand-hooked rugs are also notorious for getting caught on sharp claws. If you have carpets or throw rugs, make sure they have cut pile. If you can’t replace your current looped carpeting, keep pets’ claws trimmed regularly or you’ll probably see lots of snags before long.

Washable area rugs

Large, washable rugs can be a good solution for some. They can cover large swaths of flooring, but it’s easy to pull them up and toss them in the washer. They seem like an obvious choice for homes with pets. However, lining them up so that they stick back down properly after washing can be tricky for a single person. Doing so is almost impossible for people who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. People with washable rugs like Ruggables say rolling a vacuum or a wheelchair over them can dislodge the rugs from the grippy material below, so they don’t lie right and are a pain to smooth out.

Regular throw rugs that can only be spot-cleaned still absorb spills, drool, urine, and other nasties. They’re easier to clean and air out than installed carpeting, but still problematic.

Washable floor tiles

You can pull these up and take them to the sink or tub to wash out spills or stains. If the stains won’t budge, you can replace the whole tile.

Is it okay to put a rug on top of carpeting?

You may have heard that you can’t put throw rugs over wall-to-wall carpets because fibers on the bottom of the rug will wear away the carpet below. This is usually true. But if you use a pale, good-quality rug pad under the rug, you can minimize wear.

Over time, or with heavy wear, you’ll likely notice the difference between the textures of the covered and uncovered areas of carpet. Years of sun-bleaching or day-to-day dust will leave the exposed carpeting either bleached paler, or greyer with dirt. Expect to have to steam clean the underlying carpet when you finally remove the area rug above it. But any homes with pets and carpeting will need regular steam cleaning (once or twice a year) to keep carpets looking fresh. Regular cleaning also removes the grit that wears down fibers, so regularly vacuumed and steam-cleaned carpeting lasts longer, too.

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