How to make your home pet friendly

Bringing a new pet home doesn’t mean you have to batten down the hatches and sacrifice your personal taste in furniture, flooring and home décor. In fact, we have a few pet friendly home styling ideas that will make your home functional yet stylish, from flooring and window treatments to pet-friendly furniture and decorations.

The Sofa

The biggest threat to your home décor will be pet hair! When it comes to sofas, avoid fur magnet fabrics like velour, corduroy, and velvet. While leather is easier to clean, it can be vulnerable to scrabbling claws! To avoid your leather sofa looking like it’s been mauled by a wild animal, you can style it with a funky throw that doubles as your pet’s designated snooze spot. Conditioning your leather sofa at least three or four times a year is also vital, as dried out leather cracks and marks a lot easier than supple, conditioned leather.

If you have a pristine fabric sofa, you can treat it with Soil Guard.  Soil Guard treated fabrics prevent spills from easily soaking into the fibres, greatly reducing the chance of permanent staining (perfect for the toilet-training stage of owning a puppy or kitten!)

The Coffee Table

Zoomies and overexuberant tails really take the ‘coffee’ out of ‘coffee table’. Moving your breakable ornaments to higher ground is a no-brainer, but this doesn’t mean your coffee table needs to stay bland and bare.

Solid, low-lying objects like coffee table books make the perfect centrepiece.  A little bit of blue tac for other ornaments made of durable material also goes a long way!

Side tables that sit higher than the tail wagging zone also make a perfect addition for sitting alongside your sofa, meaning you can still relax with a cuppa nearby.

The Wood

If your teething pup or clawing kitten hasn’t already kindly decorated the wooden legs of your furniture, now may be the time redecorate! Avoid easily chewed materials like wicker and rattan; go for furniture with chrome or metal legs instead.  

The same goes for beautiful timber floors that can be susceptible to claw marks, especially if you own a large dog. We suggest going for a harder wood like mahogany or oak that won’t mark as easily. Also, keep in mind that woods with a stronger grain (like oak) will show a more dramatic pattern, which hides those claw marks better!

A cheaper alternative like laminate flooring or vinyl is also easy to clean and more resilient to the aftermath of play time.

We have in-store flooring consultants at both our Stratford and New Plymouth stores, so come in and have a chat to the team about which flooring will suit your home (and your hound) best!

The Plants

On top of trying to remember the long list of foods your pet can and can’t eat, it can be daunting to also memorise which plants are safe to have in your home. Many common house plants like peace lilies, aloe vera, pothos and ZZ plants are toxic to pets if ingested, so consider replacing them with artificial plants and flowers. These are also a lot lower maintenance and won’t stain your carpet or furniture with dirt if your pet upends the pot!

The Window Treatments

Although stinky breath fog and slobber will inevitably adorn your windows, it doesn’t mean your window treatments have to suffer the same fate. Thick, floor-length curtains will attract dust and dog hair (or worse, make an attractive tug toy or jungle gym!) so consider venetian blinds which you can hoist out of harm’s way.

Our window treatment consultants Kathy, Debbie and Natasha are well-versed in the art of pet-friendly window treatments, so feel to free to make an appointment with them at either our Stratford or New Plymouth stores.

Time to enjoy your furry addition!

Getting your pet ready to come into your home is such a process itself that you often forget whether your home is ready for your pet! But by pet-proofing your home following the principles above, you’ll get to spend more time enjoying your pet and less time cleaning up in their wake!