Help Your Furniture and Flooring Get Along

Furniture pads for hardwood floors are an absolute essential. There’s no way around it.

If you want to preserve the appearance and condition of your flooring – pad the area between your floor and the objects that come in contact with it.

Felt Pads for Furniture
There are a few different types of furniture floor protectors to choose from:

  • Tap-on furniture pads
  • Nail-on furniture pads
  • Self-adhesive pads
  • Slip-on pads

We recommend self-adhesive and slip-on pads for hardwood floors. Tap-on and nail-on furniture floor protectors, while lasting longer, have a greater potential of damaging your flooring.

Pad Material
Felt and fabric (such as furniture socks) work best for hardwood floors.

Towels are a nice DIY option when they can be hidden beneath oddly shaped items such as bed frames or furniture without legs. You can also purchase your own felt and create custom furniture padding.

Do not use rubber, plastic, cork or metal. You may see rubber as an alternative elsewhere online, but it can leave scuff marks. More importantly, some rubber pads can actually discolor your floor, depending on the material and your floor’s finish.

Pad Effectiveness
For furniture pads to be effective, keep your floors clean – free of dirt and grit that can get beneath the pad and damage your floor.

Also be sure they remain secure. Perform a routine check of all objects sitting on your floor’s surface to ensure everything is padded and the pads are properly placed.

Felt Furniture Pads for Hardwood Floors

The obvious benefit of felt furniture pads is to protect your floor from scratches, scrapes, dents, dings, etching, and gouging. Make sure the felt of your pads is thick enough for the heaviest of furniture.

Felt pads help eliminate noise as well – such as the scraping of a chair sliding in and out.

But a word of caution:

Felt pads allow you to move and slide heavy furniture and other objects with ease. Though this can be a nice feature, any sand or grit beneath the pad, or captured during the move, may scratch your flooring. It’s always better to pick up and carry furniture versus dragging it across the floor.

A disadvantage of felt pads is that they attract and collect pet hair and dust. They are difficult to keep clean. In addition, the adhesive will eventually wear out and could partially detach or fall off, exposing your floor to damage.

You may need to replace them every 4 to 6 months.

Felt Pad Recommendations

There are a lot of brands to choose from, but from a quality standpoint, we like Stanley Flexi-Felt® and Heavy Duty Felt furniture pads.

Stanley generally makes a higher-density felt pad that features an industrial strength adhesive so the felt stays on and lasts longer. They come in brown or oatmeal color, in a variety sizes, including cut-to-size options.

Heavy Duty Felt Pads

Furniture Socks

Another option in furniture pads for hardwood floors that we absolutely love are furniture socks – NancyProtectz™ brand in particular.

The inventor of NancyProtectz™ furniture socks is a work-at-home mom who was frustrated with the battle of chair legs scratching her beautiful hardwood floors. She came up with her own creative solution, perfected it, and started manufacturing in 2007.

Use them on chairs, tables, end tables, plant stands and any other furniture with ‘legs’ that come into contact with your floor.

One of the nicest features of these socks is cleanliness. Regular furniture pads collect dog and cat hair, house dust and anything else that ‘sticks’ to and accumulates around the felt. It is very unsightly and cleaning is a nearly impossible chore.

Furniture socks do attract pet hair and dust, just like their felt counterparts; but you can remove them, throw them in the wash, and put them back on clean, with great efficiency and ease.

They are also more economical. Felt pads lose their adhesion over time, especially in homes with pets (and pet hair), and need to be replaced. Felt pads can also become re-positioned or fall off completely (and you may not know it for awhile) – exposing your hardwood floors to scratches, scrapes, dents, and etching.

Furniture socks offer complete coverage and more dependable protection – generally, they won’t fall off nor will they wear out for years.

More Awesome Features of Furniture Socks

  • They come in fashionable colors to match your decor.
  • They are easy to install and stretch to fit most furniture leg sizes. NancyProtectz™ furniture socks work on most leg shapes including square, round, rectangular, oval and bun feet. They are not recommended for tapered legs.
  • Use them in conjunction with felt pads for double the protection, especially with heavy objects. If you already have pads on the legs of your furniture – great! Leave them on and slide a furniture sock right over the top of them for extra protection.
  • Rubberized grips on the inside provide slip resistance.
  • As mentioned, they are machine washable and reusable.

Chair Leg Pads

One more of the many options for furniture pads is chair leg pads. These slip-on chair leg floor protectors are easy to use and last longer than adhesive furniture pads. They aren’t just for chair legs, any furniture leg will work!


There are many different shapes, colors, and sizes of furniture leg pads to choose from. Smaller chair leg pads may not fit on your furniture. If they are too big, they may fall off when picking the furniture up. Make sure to get the right sizing or use different chair leg floor protectors.

Take a Furniture Pad Inventory

As part of your hardwood floor care routine, take inventory of your furniture pads. Walk through your entire home and make sure you’ve padded all furniture and other items that could cause damage.

Also, ensure the pad adhesive is maintaining it’s stick-power and position. Keep extra pads on hand, and whenever you bring in a new item, pad it immediately.

Furniture pads for hardwood floors are necessary to protect and maintain your flooring investment.