Wooden floors look beautiful in dollhouses and they can be adapted to look modern, traditional or rustic, depending on the type of flooring and finish you choose.
To make dollhouse wooden floors you can use:
- Card or paper with a printed wooden pattern
- Specialist real wood dollhouse flooring
- DIY wooden flooring made with small pieces of wood, such as coffee stirrers or lollipop sticks
All of the above can be secured with regular PVA glue or glue dots, though some specialist dollhouse flooring is sold in self-adhesive sheets. Dollhouse flooring made of real wood can be stained or painted to the colour of your choice.
Below, we’ll look at the above options in more detail.
Dollhouse wood flooring card or paper sheets
The easiest and cheapest way to install wooden dollhouse flooring is to use paper or cardboard with wooden floor detail printed on it. The main options for card or paper dollhouse flooring are:
- to buy and print downloadable dollhouse flooring
- to buy pre-printed dollhouse flooring
I’ve written in depth about printable dollhouse wallpaper and the process is very similar for flooring – you can read about how to make your own dollhouse wallpaper (the technique is the same for flooring) in my post 15 Free Printable Dollhouse Wallpapers And How To Design Your Own.
Sellers on Etsy have a huge range of downloadable dollhouse flooring in beautiful wooden designs, but the quality of the print will depend on how good your printer is and what type of paper or card you print it on. If your printer isn’t great, then it’s best to buy pre-printed dollhouse wallpaper.
Etsy is a great place to pick up pre-printed dollhouse wallpaper as well. Below are a couple of designs from the seller miniaturecorner. The wooden designs are printed on high quality 190gsm matte card and the edges match up so they can fit together if you have a particularly large dollhouse floor to cover.
You can buy this parquet flooring here, the intricate pattern would look lovely in any dollhouse.
Miniaturecorner also sells a range of printed wooden floorboard paper in a huge range of finishes so you can choose the right one for the style of your dollhouse. You can buy the floorboard paper below here.
Big-name dollhouse retailers such as Minimum World, Melody Jane and The Dollhouse Emporium all sell high quality card and paper dollhouse flooring with wooden designs. I used white herringbone embossed card flooring from Minimum World for the kitchen floor in my dollhouse, it was exceptionally high quality.
Parquet flooring is a popular choice for dollhouses as it looks beautiful and is versatile enough to work in modern or vintage style dollhouses. Dollhouse flooring card or paper is the cheapest way to install parquet in a dollhouse. I used a large sheet for parquet for the middle floor of my dollhouse and it only cost a couple of pounds from The Dolls House Emporium.
Card and paper sheet wooden dollhouse flooring is easy to install, and if you want to find out how, read my blog post How Do You Lay Dollhouse Floor? for full instructions and images.
Specialist dollhouse wood flooring strips
Dollhouse wood flooring strips are basically sheets of real wood that can be peeled off in strips, or fitted as a whole sheet of wooden flooring. They have a self-adhesive backing and usually come unfinished so you can finish them off with varnish, stain, wax, paint or just leave natural.
I used unfinished wood veneer from The Dolls House Emporium for £11.50 for the floor in my dollhouse dining room. It came in pre-cut self-adhesive planks, so you can peel the planks off individually and apply them directly to the floor.
As my dollhouse has a lip at the front of it, I decided not to attach the flooring to the dollhouse floor as the lip would hold it in place. I removed two of the planks from the length of the sheet and cut the side of the sheet to size with scissors.
The flooring is 2mm thick, so bear this in mind when fitting it as it might be tricky to fit partitions and doors in once the flooring is laid. In my dollhouse I needed to make sure I cut the wood so it wouldn’t go underneath the removable partition, otherwise the partition wouldn’t have fit back in the house.
In the image below you can see the wooden strips still attached to the backing.
The image below shows how I had to cut the flooring so it didn’t lay under the removable partition.
DIY wooden dollhouse flooring
There are lots of materials you can use to make your own wooden flooring for a dollhouse. Popular choices include lollipop sticks and coffee stirrers, arranged either in straight lines or in a parquet pattern.
I’ve never done this myself, but there are some excellent tutorials on YouTube that talk you through every stage. The Square To Spare is one of my favourite miniaturists on YouTube and her herringbone flooring is just stunning.
Miniature enthusiast Gayle Morvan shared her DIY wooden dollhouse flooring with me and I’m so happy to include her images below. Gayle has refurbished a Lundby Gothenberg dollhouse which she found in a bin and which needed a complete overhaul.
She made the beautiful flooring using coffee stirrers and bamboo placemats.
Below are some images of the work in progress.
Below are some images of the finished flooring in place and it looks incredible!
On another Lundby project, Gayle painted the wooden floors white to add a stunning finish to a beautiful beachy look.
You can see more of Gayle’s unique flooring in the post How Do You Lay Dollhouse Floor?
There are so many ways to personalise your dollhouse with wooden flooring, whether you want to buy it ready-made or have a go yourself. For more flooring inspiration, check out my blog post 12 Fabulous DIY Flooring Ideas For Dollhouse And Miniature Rooms.