Dollhouse flooring can set the tone for your room and help tell the story of your dollhouse. As with everything in my dollhouse, I chose flooring based on what I’d like in real life, if I didn’t have kids and didn’t live in the permanently cold UK! We have carpet in our real house, but my mini house has beautiful wooden floors in the bedroom, lounge, dining room and kitchen.
Below, I share tips of how to lay dollhouse flooring, no matter what style you choose for your dollhouse. If you want to find out how to install wooden dollhouse flooring, then I’ve written an entire blog post about that here.
Before we get started, if you’re building a dollhouse kit, then don’t lay the flooring until after you’ve built the dollhouse. Although it might seem easier to do it before, as you’ll have full access to the floor, laying the floor at this stage may make it trickier to fit the house together, especially if you use a thick material for the flooring.
Your quick guide to laying dollhouse flooring
Before you lay your dollhouse flooring, make sure the surface is smooth and clean.
- Make a template by measuring the dimensions of the room and then cutting the floor shape out of card.
- Check the card fits by slotting it into the room. This way you can be sure the flooring will fit exactly before you cut it.
- Cut out the flooring and either attach it to the template, or attach it directly to the dollhouse floor.
- Attach the flooring with glue dots (double-sided sticky dots) that will easily allow you to remove the floor when needed.
How I laid the paper flooring in my dollhouse
I bought the flooring for the middle floor of my dollhouse from The Dolls House Emporium, it’s an A3 sheet of thick paper with a glossy finish.
Step 1: I measured the floor area I wanted to cover.
Step 2: I taped together three pieces of card stock and drew out the floor area on these. I then used a craft knife and metal ruler to cut out the template.
Step 3: I put the template into the dollhouse and checked it fitted, making adjustments where needed, and then stuck the flooring to the template. You don’t have to stick the flooring to the template, you can attach it directly to the dollhouse floor, or put it in the dollhouse without sticking it down. I glued the floor to the template, but didn’t stick it to the dollhouse floor as I wanted to be able to easily change it in future.
Step 4: The final step is to put the flooring into your dollhouse, either laying it without gluing it down or fixing it down with glue – I’d recommend using glue dots so it’s easy to remove the flooring to reach any electrics or to update it in future.
You’ll notice in the image above that there’s a section missing from the right hand side flooring. This is because I accidentally cut the stair hole in the wrong side of the flooring! So it’s vital that if you’re drawing the hole you want to cut on the back of your flooring, you take into account that the flooring will be reversed when it’s put in place! I fixed this error with some glue and a handily placed rug.
The finished flooring:
I did exactly the same process to lay the carpet in the children’s bedroom, on the left below.
For the bathroom on the right, I used a part of a drawer liner and it was a too stretchy to fit onto a template, so I just measured the room dimensions and cut the material out without making a template. The drawer liner only cost a couple of pounds and was two metres long so I could afford to take more of a trial and error approach with it!
Different types of dollhouse flooring and how to lay them
Peel and stick dollhouse flooring
Stick & Go are the most well-known name in self-adhesive dollhouse flooring and they have multiple designs of 1:12 scale carpet and faux hardwood flooring, including this beautiful sheet of wooden floor below, which is available from Amazon in the UK.
Peel and stick flooring does exactly what it says, you peel the back off and stick it down directly onto the floor of your dollhouse, or a card template if you prefer. Peel and stick flooring is usually vinyl so will have a glossy finish which is ideal for wooden and tiled dollhouse flooring.
Most dollhouse carpet is self adhesive, but having removed the dollhouse carpet from my dollhouse, I wouldn’t recommend sticking it directly onto the dollhouse floor as it’s such a pain to get off again!
Etsy is another great place to pick up peel and stick dollhouse flooring, there’s a huge range of designs to suit every era. Try PoppetsDollyBits for some bright retro tile designs.
When applying peel and stick flooring, peel back one corner and line this up exactly with the corner of your dollhouse floor or the template, then peel the rest of the sheet away, whilst smoothing the flooring down with a ruler. It’s best to use a plastic ruler to do this, I tried it with a metal ruler and nearly teared the flooring! Smooth out the flooring to remove any air bubbles as you peel off the underside.
From my experience, if you don’t apply peel and stick flooring correctly the first time, you can unpeel it and re-stick but the more times you do this, the less sticky the flooring will be and the more likely it’ll be to peel off once it’s fitted.
Card and paper dollhouse flooring
Card and paper is by far the cheapest option for dollhouse flooring, not least because you can make it yourself! You can find out how by watching the video below, or if you want to download some ready-made wallpaper, visit my post 15 Free Printable Dollhouse Wallpapers And How To Design Your Own.
If you don’t have a printer or if you prefer the glossy finish of professionally printed dollhouse flooring then you can buy a multitude of designs online.
I’ve used card dollhouse flooring from The Dolls House Emporium and Minimum World. In the image below, the white herringbone flooring is a sheet from Minimum World that cost about £4. It was about A3 size and was better quality and thicker than the cheaper sheet of parquet flooring from The Dolls House Emporium.
Etsy is another place you’ll find paper and card dollhouse flooring, and many sellers provide printable dollhouse wallpaper, though this can be expensive considering you still have to print it yourself. For pre-printed flooring, try MiniatureMakersUK, which produce water and fade resistant dollhouse flooring.
Dollhouse enthusiast Charlie Wilkinson used card lime washed parquet flooring from Streets Ahead in her dollhouse with stunningly realistic results.
To install paper or card dollhouse flooring, just follow the guide above and use a template to make sure your flooring is cut exactly to size.
Carpet dollhouse flooring
If you want to lay carpet in your dollhouse, make sure you choose carpet made for dollhouses, or a suitable alternative. Using offcuts of real carpet will make your dollhouse look unbalanced. Not only is full-size carpet too thick, but dollhouse furniture is too light to sit on it correctly, so your furniture will look as though it’s teetering on the top of the carpet.
Many dollhouse retailers sell carpet, I bought mine from Melody Jane on Amazon, they have a great range of plain carpets which work well in modern dollhouses.
Other materials to try include felt, fleece, upholstery fabric or velvet. I even tried a fabric placemat as dollhouse flooring!
When laying dollhouse flooring, create a template in the same way as described above for cardboard flooring, then cut your carpet to size. Just make sure you don’t stretch the fabric as you cut it, stretching it out will mean that when you come to fit it, it will be too small.
You can attach a dollhouse carpet using glue, but as we’re dealing with fabric, it’s best to use a minimum amount of glue so it doesn’t seep through the fabric. Tacky glue, PVA and glue dots all work as adhesives for attaching dollhouse carpet.
Apply glue to the back of the carpet in little dots around the outside and across the middle in an ‘X’ shape. Sick the carpet down gently, without stretching it out, especially if you’re using a material such as felt which is incredibly stretchy.
Just remember that carpet is very difficult to move once it’s attached to your dollhouse floor, so consider gluing your carpet to a cardboard template and slotting it in instead. This way you can change it whenever you want and you can take it out easily when it needs cleaning.
Below is a the lovely ice-blue carpet in my dollhouse children’s room from Melody Jane, you can view their full range on Etsy.
Tiled dollhouse flooring
Laying tiled flooring can add another level of realism to a dollhouse. It looks beautiful and is not as difficult to fit as you might think.
The images below show some of the many different styles you can create using tiny tiles. These stunning floors are made by miniaturist Gayle Morvan, and she made them using miniature tiles she found in craft shops, or from ex-shop displays. The tiles are attached to the the surface of the dollhouse floor with PVA glue and then the gaps in between are filled in with fine grit grout.
You can buy card sheets that look like tiles, or, if you have a bigger budget, there are specialist shops which sell handmade miniature tiles, like the jaw-dropping selection at KrugerTiles on Etsy.
What’s the best glue for dollhouse flooring?
I use a glue stick to attach paper and cardboard dollhouse flooring to the flooring template. If you want to attach flooring of any kind directly onto the surface of your dollhouse floor then use glue dots. These double-sided sticky dots will keep all types of flooring in place and make it super easy to remove the flooring if you need to access the floor beneath, or if you want to update the floor.
You can buy glue dots from Amazon for less than two pounds.
How do you get glue off a dollhouse floor?
From my experience, it’s best to heat the glue up with a hairdryer and scrape the glue off with a wallpaper scraper. Once the majority of the glue is removed, use warm soapy water to remove the rest. For really stubborn glue you may need to use sandpaper to loosen the glue before washing it off.
You can find out more about removing dollhouse flooring in the video below.