Is your furniture sliding on your vinyl floors or hardwood floors? Are you constantly readjusting your living room couch or chairs because its moved across your floor, again? This issue is not only annoying, but the hard furniture legs and feet could damage your nice hardwood floor or laminate.
This is a common problem for many homeowners, but there are many methods you can use to keep your furniture in place:
To keep your furniture from sliding, you can should use DIY grippers, rugs, rubber pads, feet pad covers, or stop blocks. These will keep furniture in place, protect your floor, and stop furniture from slipping out from under you.
Using one or more of these methods, it’s easy to keep furniture from sliding and prevent those furniture legs from making marks on your floors. Let’s take a look in more detail.
5 Methods to Stop Furniture From Sliding
Let’s consider a few options on how to keep your furniture from sliding and damaging the flooring.
1 - How to Keep Furniture From Sliding With DIY Grippers
This DIY option is a great way to keep furniture from sliding across your floor. You can make your own furniture grips for any furniture leg using easily available materials. These grips are little pieces of a non-slip material that are put under the feet to prevent sliding.
- Put a piece of card under the foot and trace around it. Cut this shape out to make your template at the right size.
- Get some non-slip drawer lining mesh (readily available in your local home improvement store) then utilize your template to cut the pieces to the right size.
- Pop the homemade gripper under the couch legs, or whatever furniture you want to stay put. If the furniture is something you intend to keep in place for quite a while, this is a good, quick option. There is no need to glue the material to the foot as you won’t be sliding this piece of furniture around often.
This method isn’t recommended if you frequently move the piece around, as you’d have to replace it under the legs each time.
2 - Utilize a Rug to Prevent Your Couch From Moving
A rug is an easy way to decorate your living room and prevent the furniture from sliding at the same time. An area rug is great for furniture that is close together, like the couch and surroundings. Perfect for laminate floors too!
An area rug, or rugs placed wherever you need them, provides a small section of carpet which is normally enough to stop furniture from slipping. However, if the furniture is not that heavy, or you have super slippery hard floors – the rug could slip too!
If you have a slippery rug, because of the wood floors, it might be necessary to add a rug pad. This is a grip material, often rubber, that goes discretely under the rug to keep it in place. An area rug with your couch and others items on it will likely stay put from the weight without this.
Of course, a rug can be a good option to use for adding some texture, color, or even comfort to the wood floor in addition to keeping the furniture pieces where they should be. This is the most expensive way to keep furniture from sliding, but the added aesthetics of an area rug or rugs may make it worth it to you.
3 - How to Keep Furniture From Sliding With Rubber Pads
Furniture grippers are sit beneath the legs of your furniture to prevent sliding. Store-bought alternatives are typically made from rubber, and can provide a long-lasting solution. Some products will not need to be attached to the couch, you just place them under the legs. The rubber has enough grip from the couch weight to keep them in place. Others will attach to the feet so you don’t need to worry about them sliding off.
Before getting your furniture grippers, measure how big the feet that need a gripper to make sure you choose the right size. You might not want the furniture grippers protruding out the bottom of the sofa, so getting the size right can ensure it looks discrete.
4 - How to Keep Furniture From Sliding With Feet Pad Covers
Feed pad covers are like little silicone feet for your chair legs. They come in different shapes and sizes, including square or round, to fit your chair legs.
They can often be purchased quite affordably in sets so you can put feet on all the chairs and get a pack for the tables legs too. As they come already in a set size, it is extra important to measure all the feet first.
These feet covers are an affordable option for item that are moved around a lot and have accessible feet. For the bigger items, like a couch, furniture pads (see above) might be better suited.
5 - How to Use Stop Blocks to Secure Furniture Legs
Stop blocks are all in the name- a block that stops the couches and other pieces from moving. You can buy stop blocks or create your own at home. Put the block between the wall and the feet of the furniture to prevent it from sliding into the wall. This is a good thing for larger chairs or a couch that sits near a wall.
Protecting Your Floors
In addition to the above, here are some tips to protect your floors from scratches.
Protecting Floors From Furniture That is Frequently Moved
Some smaller pieces of furniture may actually slide around quite often, such as a chair at the dining room table. Someone is likely to move these chairs every time you eat. So the thing is here, how do you keep the legs from causing scratches?
We recommend you follow the instructions for DIY grippers above, but at step 2 choose felt instead for the floor pads. Then, you will want to attach them so they stick to the chair legs. The even easier option is to purchase store-bought felt floor pads. The felt will allow the chair to slide but stop is from scratching the floor.
Protect Your Floors With Regular Dusting
Dust is not a friend to wood floors. It can also be unhelpful to furniture pads too and your efforts to stop furniture from sliding. The dust can make the wood floor more slippery and keep your furniture sliding around every time you use your furniture.
If dust is under the furniture legs where you have rubber pads or grippers, it could cause the products to break down faster, or the furniture leg to slip off the gripper. If the pads have been attached to the furniture leg, the build-up could cause the pads to unstick over time.
The more often you clean the dust from your wood floor, or even laminate flooring if you’re having issues, the less chance of these sliding furniture.
Conclusion
It’s worth taking the little bit of effort to keep furniture from sliding to protect your hardwood or laminate floor. As you’ve seen, the solution can be as simple as adding a furniture gripper to the dining room table or couch.
Pretty much any furniture legs can be helped by the kinds of furniture grips mentioned above, although you may need to invest in a more substantial solution like a block stop or the carpet cushioning of a rug to stop the big like the couch from moving.
Overall – you can keep furniture from sliding on a hardwood floor and once the rubber pads or the like are set up, you can relax.
