By: Audrey Denise B. Cachuela
Floodwater entered Jessica Holmes Holiday’s home in 2024 and destroyed the design studio she had spent years building. The loss changed how the founder of HSH Collective thinks about flood-resistant home design.
Jessica has over 25 years of interior design experience and grew up on Anna Maria Island, where her family has lived for four generations. Coastal materials were familiar ground for her, which is why her second thoughts after the storms are worth hearing.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on September 26, 2024 (Source: NOAA, 2024), and Hurricane Milton came ashore near Siesta Key less than two weeks later, on October 9 (Source: National Weather Service, 2024). Both storms left homeowners and business owners along Florida’s Gulf Coast with hard calls about repairing or rebuilding.
Jessica faced those decisions for the studio and two family homes. Sorting through the ruined materials afterward made her reconsider some of the products she had specified in the past, especially on ground floors.
That left her with a question anyone building or renovating in a flood-prone area can steal: can a room stay beautiful and cost less to recover after the next flood? The answer starts before the first tile gets picked.
Why Flood-Resistant Home Design Starts With Material Selection
Before falling for a paint color or a flooring pattern, ask what happens to it when water gets in. A bathroom floor that handles splashes and wet footprints can behave very differently once floodwater carrying salt, sediment, and sewage reaches it. In flood-prone areas that question comes first, and flood-resistant materials get chosen before anything is picked for looks.
“Flood-resistant” has a formal definition. Materials that qualify as flood damage-resistant must withstand direct, prolonged contact with floodwater without significant damage, and buildings in designated flood hazard areas face specific requirements for them. (Source: FEMA, 2025) A “waterproof” label on a box sets a much lower bar.
A homeowner renovating a ground floor picks flooring marketed as waterproof because it’s easy to maintain and holds up to kids and pets, which is a sensible call for everyday moisture. A flood plays by different rules, because it pushes water into every seam and layer beneath the surface.
Water can slip beneath flooring and settle in the adhesive layer between the finished surface and the structure below, so a floor that looks sound on top may need to come out for cleaning and drying. The substrate matters too: the same finish, such as vinyl tile or paint, can be rated acceptable over concrete and unacceptable over plywood or a wood wall. (Source: FEMA, 2025)
The question to ask during product selection is whether the material and its installation can be cleaned and dried in place after flooding. The answer puts the whole installation under review, including the layers nobody sees once the room is done.
Flood-Resistant Flooring for Flood-Prone Homes, From Lvp to Porcelain Tile
Luxury vinyl plank (LVP) is where water-resistant and flood-resistant products part ways. It is affordable and handles everyday moisture well, and its wood look explains why Jessica, reluctant at first, came around to it for certain spaces.
The hurricanes changed her mind. Nearly every LVP installation she came across afterward had to be removed, and the one exception was a high-end, commercial-grade product with a rubber backing. Replacing ruined flooring costs money, and the discarded material adds to the waste stream, so she stopped recommending conventional LVP for ground floors exposed to flooding. Other vinyl products vary in construction and in performance, so the specific build matters in an area vulnerable to inundation.
Replacement runs higher than the price of new planks, because homeowners may also pay for demolition, debris removal, adhesive removal, subfloor cleaning, drying, and reinstallation. That math pushed Jessica toward surfaces that are hard and washable.
Porcelain tile is a favorite of hers. The hard surface cleans up after water exposure, and the finishes can look like limestone, concrete, or other natural materials, which opens up options beyond wood-look vinyl. Installation matters here: FEMA rates tile set in mortar as acceptable for flood damage resistance, and organic adhesives fall in the unacceptable category. (Source: FEMA, 2025)
She also uses natural stone, depending on the project and the stone. Porosity, grout, and substrate conditions affect how a floor behaves after a flood, so check a stone’s flood-resistance classification and installation requirements before committing.
Shellcrete, a concrete-based finish with shell aggregate, is another of her materials, and it brings a continuous mineral surface to coastal home design.
Flood-Resistant Wall Materials, Stairs, and Cabinetry
Floodwater affects everything it reaches. Wall finishes, trim, stair risers, built-in storage, and the lower parts of cabinetry can all create serious repair work when they absorb water or hide moisture. A flood-ready floor in a vulnerable room solves half the problem at best.
FEMA rates built-in cabinets made of wood or particle board as unacceptable for flood damage resistance, along with paper-faced gypsum board, and rates cement board and fiber-cement board as acceptable for walls. (Source: FEMA, 2025) Those ratings explain why cabinetry and conventional wall construction deserve a hard look in a flood-prone room.
For ground-floor spots where it makes sense, Jessica has been exploring water-resistant panels, including certain cementitious and marine-grade polymer products. Some come in shiplap or board-and-batten profiles, which deliver texture through materials that tolerate moisture. The wall behind a decorative panel needs its own flood resistance, because a panel is only as dependable as what sits behind it.
On some projects, Jessica has gone with tile on the vulnerable lower portions of stairs, which cuts down on painted wood risers that may need to come out after prolonged water exposure. The goal across floors, walls, and stairs is less demolition if another flood comes.
Furniture for a Room That Might Flood
Furniture can take a big share of the budget for a lower-level room, especially one used for recreation or entertaining. Before the hurricanes, Jessica sometimes picked conventional upholstered chairs for ground-floor areas. For lower-level rooms that could flood she now prefers furniture made for indoor-outdoor use, with nonabsorbent frames, removable cushions, and materials meant to tolerate moisture and repeated cleaning. Cushions and porous components that soak up contaminated floodwater may need to be thrown out, and the frames can be cleaned and kept.
A flood-resistant room can keep the warmth of a home. Upstairs, an antique wooden cabinet or a moisture-sensitive upholstered sofa can stay put, and the ground floor gets washable seating. Personal objects and distinctive finishes belong in the rooms that stay dry.
Flood Damage Restoration: What Happens After the Water Leaves
Flood damage restoration begins the moment the water leaves, and a durable surface can stay contaminated long after it dries. Anything soaked by floodwater should leave the home unless it can be cleaned and dried completely within 24 to 48 hours, and the rest of the house and its contents should dry within that same window. (Source: CDC, 2024) Contact with floodwater can leave a material unsafe to keep, which makes thorough cleaning a requirement even for hard surfaces.
Her experience brought up problems an ordinary renovation seldom raises. During the flooding, sewage backed up through plumbing fixtures and badly contaminated the affected spaces, which sharpened her focus on plumbing protection. One option to raise with a licensed plumber is a backwater valve, since an appropriately designed one could reduce the risk of sewage reversing through a drainage system. A backwater valve differs from an ordinary fixture shutoff valve, which controls the water supply.
Wet electrical equipment and standing water should be left alone until qualified professionals have completed post-flood inspections. A room that looks ready for furniture may need those checks first.
Rebuilding After a Hurricane Means Function First
Storm recovery brings its own pressures. Materials can be hard to find, and contractors may have long waiting lists while insurance decisions sit unresolved as people try to get back to daily life.
Jessica met those pressures as she rebuilt her business. The hurricanes damaged her original studio and destroyed supplies, product samples, equipment, and furnishings, and she picked a substantially larger unit over reopening the same space. Her team went back to work before every finishing detail was done, gathering around a salvaged conference table in a simple concrete room with water marks still on the walls. That room kept the business running while the showroom she eventually wanted took shape.
Homeowners facing their own rebuild can borrow the lesson from that table: get the basic functions of a property working first and finish the rest later, because a room can be useful long before it looks finished.
Function first starts with checking what the flood left behind. Damaged structural components, insulation, and other concealed materials need to be confirmed safe before cosmetic work starts, since finishing over moisture hides problems long after a room looks repaired. Mold keeps growing under paint or caulk, so the moisture problem has to be fixed and the mold removed first. (Source: CDC, 2024)
What Two Hurricanes Changed About Flood-Resistant Home Design
The storms changed how Jessica judges a design decision. Looks and price both matter, and a third question decides the outcome in flood-prone areas: how the material behaves once water arrives. Answering it means tracking how much of the room can be cleaned and kept, and how long it takes to make the home usable again. The same questions apply to a floor, a wall, a sofa, or a drain line.
Interior finishes reduce certain kinds of flood damage, and hurricane-resistant design adds structural design, code compliance, flood mitigation, and emergency planning to the mix. Coastal home design works best when those layers are planned together.
For anyone planning construction or renovations on the coast, the best next step is a review of the property’s flood exposure with qualified design and construction professionals before any finishes are chosen. That conversation should cover floor elevations, wall assemblies, flooring systems, furnishings, and plumbing protection.
Flood-resistant home design works best when it’s planned before the water arrives. Jessica Holmes Holiday and the HSH Collective team work with property owners on Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key, and elsewhere along Florida’s Gulf Coast, where choices about floors, walls, and furnishings are far easier to make before construction starts than after the next storm.
