Carpet tile might not be the most popular floor covering around, but chances are you’ll be hearing more and more about this versatile on-the-verge trend.

“More people are learning about them,” says Ruth Brown, an assistant sales associate at Flooring America & Home Decor. “They are coming out with new styles, new colors. So more people are starting to ask about them.”

How they work

One of the benefits of investing in carpet tiles is the ability to create a rug or runner specifically for any size room. Carpet tiles are usually about 20 square inches (or less) and come in a multitude of colors, patterns and styles. You can link the tiles to each other or directly to the floor, creating a variety of looks.

A standard for more utilitarian uses like in kids’ playrooms, more and more tiles have come into the forefront as a stylish wall-to-wall alternative. “You can change the pattern, laying one tile north, laying one south,”says Jimmy Terrell of McCall’s Carpet One in Bellevue. And companies like FLOR offer an online calculator to help you figure out just how many tiles you will need based on your room size and style of rug you want to create.

Just be sure to order more than you need. Unlike wall-to-wall carpet that needs to be expensively cleaned or entirely replaced after a horrible spill, modular carpet tiles are replaceable. Stock up if you are laying it down in a high-traffic area. “In fact, I encourage
people who buy carpet tiles to buy extra in case they are discontinued,” Terrell says. And tiles bought at a later date may have a slightly different color, so try and by from the same batch.

“The biggest reason why most of the people I’ve worked with want carpet tiles is they can pull up a couple if they get damaged instead of replacing the whole room,” Brown says. Better than that, you can clean the tiles in the sink before giving up the ghost entirely. And if you just can’t get those stains out, Interface, the company that works with FLOR, will recycle your old, stained tiles for free.

source : www.rctimes.com