There are lots of tutorials out there for how to make your own dollhouse flooring. I’ve researched and written about this before and you can read the results in the blog post 12 Fabulous Flooring Ideas For Dollhouses And Miniature Rooms.
But what if you don’t want to make your own flooring? What if you’d rather buy something and fit it straight away without having to make anything yourself?
If this is something you want to do for your dollhouse, then you’re in the right place. In this article I’ll walk you through the best hacks for updating your dollhouse flooring.
As a general rule, the best pre-made dollhouse flooring to buy is carpets or wood effect flooring from specialist dollhouse retailers (and we’ll cover that in this blog). BUT there are also many other items you can use for dollhouse flooring, including:
- Drawer liners
- Fabric placemats
- PVC tablecloths
- Table protectors
- Fabric samples
- Woven coasters
All of these have many advantages as they are cheap, readily available from department stores or soft furnishing retailers, and you can fit them in minutes. If you use your imagination then the possibilities are endless, what looks like a table runner, could actually be luxurious flooring for your doll’s feet.
I will share a top tip before we start, if you do choose any of the hacks below that involve cutting material, it’s so worth investing in a cutting mat and a craft knife as it’s much easier and accurate than using scissors.
1. Use a drawer liner for dollhouse vinyl flooring
This is is my favourite option for a super cheap, super cool looking kitchen or bathroom floor for your dollhouse. Drawer liners come in many different materials and patterns, often they’re made of thick paper and smell like perfume, or that was what they were like when my mum used them in the 1980s! But when I saw this liner in B&M’s (the UK’s answer to Dollar Tree) for £2.99 it looked like it would be a stylish floor cover for a modern dollhouse.
It’s made from thin plastic and is textured on both sides, with the underside having a gripped surface. This means you could cut it to size and pop it in your dollhouse without much glue or double sided sticky tape. So if you got a few different designs, you could switch the flooring with little effort and get a completely different look.
It’s also a great choice if you have kids who’ll be playing with the dollhouse as it’s robust and waterproof.
The downside of using a plastic drawer liner as dollhouse flooring is that it’s stretchy, which made it a little bit tricky to cut.
2. Fabric placemats can double up as dollhouse carpet
Fabric placemats may not seem the most obvious choice for a dollhouse carpet but if you choose the right one you can give your dolls a soft and beautifully designed cotton carpet! I got this one for just £3 from Dunelm (a UK equivalent to Bed, Bath and Beyond), it’s a decent size, 33cm x 40cm, so would cover a large room in a dollhouse. Or, if you have a very large dollhouse it would work well as a giant rug, with just a touch of wooden floor showing around the edges.
The only downside to this is that if it you needed to cut it to size, the edges could easily fray, so you’d need to seal the edges with fabric glue, unless you’re a whizz with a sewing machine.
Fabric placemats are readily available and there’s a huge selection in Dunelm, but places like Wilko and Matalan also sell similar placemats. In Dunlem, they sell them individually, which can be cheaper than having to buy multiple placemats in a set.
3. Repurpose a PVC tablecloth as dollhouse lino
This is the ultimate bargain dollhouse flooring hack, for just £1.75 I got half a metre of this silver and white checked PVC material. It’s so cheap and the huge range available (again from Dunelm) means that you could cover your entire dollhouse floor for less than a fiver!
It’s really easy to cut to size and as this particular pattern is checked, it’s easy to cut a straight line too! There’s a huge range of styles in Dunelm, but do be aware of scale though, unless you want the equivalent of a six foot dinosaur on your kids’ dollhouse room floor! As there are so many designs available, you’ll be sure to find something to suit all of the rooms in your dollhouse.
The minimum amount of material you can buy at Dunelm is half a metre, which is what I bought, but it’s way too much to cover a standard size dollhouse kitchen or bathroom. But you could use the extra material as tiles for a dollhouse bathroom or tiny kitchen splash back, or use it for a different miniature project, such as protecting your table from paint or protecting pre-baked polymer clay miniatures from dust.
4. Use a table protector to create luxurious dollhouse flooring
A table protector is somewhere between a tablecloth and placemat, it’s thick, heat proof material and is used to protect your table from hot dishes. But table protectors at the top end of the range also double up as stylish tableware and make fabulous dollhouse flooring. It’s thick and luxurious and has a nice ‘bounce’ to it too so would work well as dollhouse bedroom flooring.
Table protectors are much more expensive than PVC – exactly twice the price in the case of the ones I bought, as the half a metre of table protector was £3.50. I got his beautiful beige piece from Dunelm, so again I had to buy 0.5m but when I got home I realised I’d actually be given a metre! So this will fit out a lot of dollhouses!
Apart from the price, the other possible drawback is that the material is quite thick so if your dollhouse doesn’t have a lip at the edge of each floor, like the one in the image below, the material could potentially look a little chunky.
I had some slight trouble cutting this as the edge wasn’t perfectly straight, probably because it’s very hard to cut pieces of thick table protector in super straight lines! This meant it took a little bit of time to line it up and cut it for the flooring.
5. Fabric samples for dollhouse carpet
Using fabric samples as dollhouse carpet is something I’ve seen recommended a couple of times online. The big drawback of this though is that it will only work if you can find samples big enough! I spent ages looking at large retailers and small Etsy shops to find anywhere that sells decent size samples (I’m talking anything over 10cm squared) or shops that actually disclosed the size of their samples. Plus I feel a little bit cheeky requesting free samples when I’m definitely going to buy a sofa or curtains!
But if you can find a fabric sample or off-cut that works for your dollhouse then these are a great way to update your flooring. Upholstery fabric samples work best as they tend to be thicker. Look for textures such as velvet or suede-effect which add a lovely soft touch to a dollhouse livingroom or bedroom. Faux leather can also work well as a luxurious alternative to linoleum.
If you order some samples that are too small, you can always use them as rugs!
6. Woven coasters as dollhouse rugs
When I was in Dunelm, I found these beautiful round coasters that look just like woven rattan rugs. They only cost £3 for four and are the perfect size for dollhouse rugs. There’s not a huge range of styles available, wherever you shop for them, as they’re all made from woven grass, but some options have different colours on the edges or beads woven into them.
These ones from Dunelm are 10cm across and are thin and flat enough so that you can stand furniture on them without it wobbling or looking weird.
So for a few pounds you can update your dollhouse flooring and help create a bespoke pad for your dolls!
You can find out more about laying dollhouse flooring in my blog post How Do You Lay Dollhouse Floor?