Carpet Tiles Change the Rules of Floor Covering

Jay Johnson - The question is: Are you brave enough to decorate a room with carpet tiles? In case you've been living on the moon for the past few years, carpet tiles - loose carpet pieces that can be joined together with other pieces to create a free-form rug arrangement - are providing a fascinating option for interior design.

Vorwerk Carpet - Free-Form Carpet Tiles

We once were locked into three floor fashion options: (a) uncovered flooring like stone or tiles or wood planks, (b) wall-to-wall carpeting (see top photo, a beautiful design by Vorwerk Carpet), or (c) area rugs over the flooring material. But with carpet tiles, we're freer to create patterns and shapes on our floors. Art is no longer just the province of the four walls in a room!

Vorwerk Carpet - Free-Form Carpet TilesVorwerk Carpet - Free-Form Carpet Tiles

As you can see from the Vorwerk Carpet tiles above or the FLOR carpet tiles below, one can create patterns that form an area rug or asymmetrical shapes and various floating carpet pieces can decorate the floor. The challenge is to not compete with the decorating in the rest of the room, but if you have a stark space that could use a free-form carpet tile solution, by all means go wild and have your flooring shout out, "Look at me!"

FLOR - Carpet Tiles (Dashed Off pattern, Jailbird color)

FLOR - Carpet Tiles (All Dolled Up pattern, Grey color)

FLOR - Carpet Tiles (Suit Yourself pattern, Raffia color)

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5 of Our Favorite Flooring Finds

Irwin Weiner ASID - I can't resist a reclaimed wood floor. First, you're reusing natural materials from an earlier structure. Second, the warmth of wood is undeniable - just look at the beautiful Carlisle reclaimed chesnut floor in the California kitchen pictured at top! It's a wide-plank wonder. Here are three other beautiful flooring finds I wanted to bring to your attention. Click on each photo for more product information. Adding a great floor covering to a room is such a basic step, we oftentimes overlook the decorating impact it provides (not to mention the functionality of selecting the right flooring for spaces that receive a lot of high traffic, wear and tear). It's all about the Floor Show!

Designer Inghua Ting's ingenius recycled leather belt flooring

Drops concrete tile flooring from Mutdesign

Bolon's woven vinyl flooring now comes in an exciting range of Missoni patterns (shown here: Flame Black)

It's difficult to find anything to match the luxurious look of Devon & Devon flooring

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Design Tour: What's Underfoot at Country Floors

Faience tile from Country Floors

Kitchen by Country Floors

Janet Ramin - If you ever pictured yourself pattering barefoot across a stone floor, baking bread amidst a field of blue and white tile walls, and surrounded by old-world charm, then you need to take a look at the Country Floors showroom. Country Floors just recently opened their renovated showroom in NYC to highlight their spectacular collection of stone, ceramic, glass, and terra cotta tiles.

Golden Sienna stone by Country Floors Country Floors ShowroomDesigners at Country Floors offer many styles to suit a variety of tastes.  They include classic collections of blue and white French faience, Greek classical, Moroccan motifs, and old-world Spanish style.

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5 Rug Favorites from Diane Paparo Studios

Irwin Weiner ASID - Custom rugs really elevate home decor. It's sometimes difficult to get the message across to clients that many rooms need a good "floor show" to tie in all the other disparate elements of a room together and create a broader harmony. While one should never try to pick a rug first and say, Now we'll decorate the rest of the room around the colorway and patterns in this rug, rugs are plentiful enough that one should leave special flooring as a finishing touch to room decor. Let me nominate Diane Paparo and her boldly-patterned line of studio area rugs and runners as excellent custom-made flooring candidates for your home. I've selected a few of Diane's imaginative rugs as my favorites; click on each photo for more information.

When I design rugs, the design may say one thing on paper, but in "real life" it's the adjustments I make before it goes into production that speaks volumes. I make many samples before the final rug is added to the line because the physical practicalities of hand-knotting affects the execution of the end design.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Tomorrow's post will feature an interview with Diane, and she'll give us the scoop on how to go about choosing wood finishes, stains, and treatments for home furnishings. We get lots of questions at Design2Share on this subject, and Diane's expertise in furniture making will come in handy for our readers!

Lotus Runner: Danish Morning Interlace Area Rug: Marine

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