This is chapter 1 of "The Ultimate Guide to Carpets". Download the full e-book here.
What’s underfoot is a key part of the brand story and custom design carpet is your most versatile way of telling it. With custom design commercial carpets your design possibilities are limitless. In a way, the floor is the largest canvas in a building interior, and custom design carpets can be your paintbrush.
They can help you shape the sounds and moods of the building or even an individual room, creating a feeling of liveliness and camaraderie in one space, and with a more subtle, softer design, indicating focus and quietude in another.
Many architects and designers opt to incorporate custom carpet in the overall branding scheme by using exact matches to corporate colours or introducing corporate logos. Some go for a more integrated approach by telling the story of a company's products or values in the commercial carpet – bold brush strokes for a paint manufacturer perhaps, or fizzing bubbles for a soft drink company.
It might sound cliché, but when it comes to custom carpeting for commercial projects, anything is possible. If you can design it, it can be reproduced on carpet. And even if you can't design it, a quality carpet manufacturer will help you with going from a general idea to actual carpet design.
There's just something about a soft, comfortable floor which gives the room a certain ambience that cannot be recreated with harder flooring options like hardwood, concrete or vinyl.
Carpeting isn't just about the looks. See, custom designed commercial carpets not only impact the look of an interior, but also the sound and feel through its acoustic properties and the warmth and comfort expressed by having something soft underfoot. That tactile sensation is a critical part of the story you tell through the interior design. And there's just something about a soft, comfortable floor which gives the room a certain ambience that cannot be recreated with harder flooring options like hardwood, concrete or vinyl.
Carpet sales are on the rise as the purity of minimalism gives way to a return to more decorative interiors with a greater use of colour, pattern and textiles.
Many corporations are seeking to make their office environments more comfortable and 'home-like', with agile furnishings replacing work cubicles and employees empowered to work where they want, when they want.
In workplace design, office carpeting can be used effectively to indicate different working areas by using a patterned carpet for collaborative areas, for example, and a solid colour carpet for quiet zones for focused work. In large, open plan office environments, a carpet really comes to the fore for its acoustic qualities and ability to absorb noise. Some innovative designers are even taking carpet off the floor and using it to create decorative and acoustic wall panels.
Today's business leaders are also placing greater emphasis on workplace wellness and sustainability, both of which carpets can assist with. Other environments, such as boutique hotels and restaurants, are favouring the use of rich textiles and jewel-like colours to create an ambiance that can only be enhanced by the addition of a luxurious custom carpet in an ornate, exotic design or silky soft finish with a sheen like panne velvet.
Some innovative designers are even taking carpet off the floor and using it to create decorative and acoustic wall panels.
Originally, carpets were laboriously handmade and purely the province of princes and potentates. New technologies and dyeing techniques mean that from design to delivery, custom carpets for commercial use are available affordably and fast in a choice of wall-to-wall or high quality carpet tiles. Today, a custom carpet can grace any space and look good for many years to come. Whatever story you wish to tell, a custom carpet can help you tell it.
In the following blogposts, we hope to both inspire you with actual examples of great custom carpet design, and also guide you through the practical aspects towards choosing the perfect flooring for your project.
