Add a Touch of Class to Your Floor Registers and Returns

Many homeowners put thousands of dollars into decorating, renovations, paint, flooring, and other home improvements, yet overlook the drab brown or gray steel floor vents scattered throughout their home. For a relatively small investment you can install custom floor registers made of beautiful materials, and forged into attractive designs, throughout your home.

Match Your Registers to Your Home
Registers are available in a number of styles and materials. The first decision to make is what you want yours to be made out of. Wood floor registers are perfect for newer or newly built homes, while nickel, cast iron, copper, bronze, and brass floor registers are perfect for older homes and homes that are decorated in a more traditional style. They even make granite registers to match granite tiled floors and countertops. Look around your home and see what the dominant material is in other areas. Do your cabinets have wrought iron hardware? Are your light fixtures and doorknobs manufactured of copper or bronze? Matching brass floor registers to your brass fixtures, for example, will make them seem like part of the master design, rather than something you just threw on after the fact.

Design Is Everything
As much as materials, the design you choose for your floor registers will say a lot about what kind of ambience you're looking to achieve. Nickel, iron, copper, bronze, and brass floor registers can be forged into just about any design, although classic opera grills and other "antique" metalwork looks are far and away the most popular. Choosing these designs gives your home a turn of the century (circa 1900) quality. Other more streamlined modern designs, available in wood floor registers and different metals, add class and modernity to any room in which they're installed.

Don't Quit With The Registers
When many homeowners choose to replace their floor vents, there is a tendency to overlook cold air return registers. These vents are just as in need of that little something extra as the vents on the floor. And since retailers usually sell return registers that match their floor lines, it makes sense to purchase them all once so you've got a matching set.

Extras
Even floor vents have extra features to choose from. The biggest decision you'll have to make is between louvered or non-louvered varieties (meaning you can close off a vent if you need to). It's a nice feature to have, though studies show that turning off vents in unused rooms rarely saves much in energy costs. In fact, the resulting cold air leakage into the rest of the home from the isolated room often serves the opposite effect. The exception is if you are able to close off a major portion of your house to save the cost of heating or cooling that entire area. In that case, it is worth getting louvered models. The other thing to look for is filtered air return registers. They add another layer of protection for your furnace or air conditioner, as long you make sure to change the filters out regularly!