I love a bare floor as much as the next minimalist. However, sometimes an area rug is desirable — to delineate a section of a room, add a touch of color, or simply provide some warmth underfoot.
Anything larger than 6’ x 9’, however, can be awkward, heavy, and difficult to move.
In our former house, we found a great solution: carpet tiles, such as those made by FLOR. They’re 20” squares that come in a wide variety of colors, textures, and patterns that you can mix and match.
Here’s why they fit with our minimalist lifestyle:
They’re portable. Frequent movers will love them for this reason alone. Just stack them up, pack them in a box, and you’re ready to go!
They’re non-permanent. There’s no glue or nails involved; small adhesive “dots” connect the tiles to one another and keep them from slipping. Unlike wall-to-wall carpeting, they don’t require a carpet pad and can be easily removed.
They’re flexible. If you get tired of them in your living room, you can pick up the squares and rearrange them in your bedroom, bathroom, or anywhere else in the house. You can easily change the size or shape of the “rug” by adding or subtracting squares.
They’re interchangeable. If you can’t get that wine or coffee stain out, you don’t have to ditch the whole thing; just replace the square that’s damaged!
They’re stylish. We minimalists have good taste, and appreciate a sleek, well-designed product. :-)
They’re recyclable. You can send your old FLOR tiles back to the company to be recycled into new product.
Unfortunately, we left ours behind when we moved to the UK (as most of you know, we moved with only two duffel bags). I wish we could find them here — they’d be perfect for our current flat!
What’s your opinion on carpeting? Do you prefer bare, covered, or a mix of both?
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Maybe our carpet tiles in the UK aren’t as stylish as yours in the USA! Must admit, I have never thought of them as particularly stylish! I do have a rug in the living room just to delineate the sitting area. When I got rid of the previous rug I tried doing without just to see whether I liked floorboards throughout but decided that, for me, it was a step too far. You could certainly pick up an inexpensive rug at, say, Ikea. Crucial Trading will make up a rug in any size you like and that will suit your budget. It is worth checking their website. Or maybe carpet tiles have improved their image since the last time I looked! LOL….
Thanks for the tip on Crucial Trading, Frances — what lovely rugs!
I have a family of allergy sufferers so wall to wall carpeting is out. Plus, I don’t like the smells they hold or the off-gassing. However, I do like rugs in certain areas. Some small, some large. But, I like the carpet tile idea because they are much easier to change out than an entire rug.
Hi Jenna! They’re also fun to change around when you have a few different colors.
I prefer hardwoods with a throw rug or area rug. I LOVE carpet tiles. We had a space that was always cold because it was not insulted right. We bouth 12 tiles and made a long “rug” and now it is warm and cozy on the feet without the glue, fuss, muss or large expense.
Heather, I love how you can make any shape you want with them — perfect for odd spaces.
I get a lot of compliments on the pattern we made. I love, also, that you can get as creative as you want. And yes, they are pretty easy to cut and shape. : )
I absolutely love tile and wood flooring. I love the way my bare feet feel on the floor.
One thing that makes tile or wood flooring so minimalist is the cleaning. With carpet, a bulky vacuum is needed, and without, you just need a simple broom. No electricity is needed-just some elbow grease. To me, there is something really relaxing about sweeping the floors. It’s almost therapeutic for me.
We have carpet, however, because we haven’t had the spare cash to redo our flooring. We’ve also got pets-our bunny Mimzy prefers the carpet because her feet don’t slide, and our 45 pound dog would probably be bumping into walls all the time if we had tile or wood!
I agree, Jessica — I prefer sweeping to vacuuming any day. :-)
I love bare wood floors with the occasional rug. Not a fan of wall to wall- I have allergies and it seems like gunk gets trapped there.
I do love a sheepskin by the bed, though I’m holding off on buying one for now.
Aurora, I feel the same about wall-to-wall; bare wood always seems cleaner.
wow this takes me back–30 years ago i came across a big stack of free carpet samples at a store going out of business, and brought home enough to cover an area in my bedroom which felt cold. used carpet tape to make them stick to the floor and not separate. but it looked like crap compared to these new carpet tiles.
love hardwood flooring and tiling, hate wall to wall carpeting. i use a sisal rug in the dining room and a dhurrie in front of the sofa in the winter for warmth. both are easy to clean with a stick vacuum.
LOL, Mara, love your DIY carpet tiles! :-)
Well, I’d never heard of that but I like it–especially the remove if stained part. And since I move all the time, it seems, I think I’d like the mobility too.
Simple in France, you’ll love them if you move a lot!
Are they washable?
Rehan, FLOR recommends spot cleaning on their website, but says the individual tiles can also be washed in the sink:
http://www.flor.com/service/flor/maintenance.html
I have beautiful, old, let’s say ‘weathered” fir floors in my home, so i have just one room that’s wall to wall carpet. Area rugs, mostly Indian and Asian, throughout rest of home.
I can’t tell you how much $$ i’ve spent over the years on beautiful rugs, only to see them ruined by my cats, despite trying tape and tinfoil, so i’ve replaced most of my area rugs now with bamboo mats, which can be as large as any area rug. They’re beautiful, and the cats don’t scratch ’em. (They would scratch sisal, which I’ve also tried.) They’re also VERY reasonably priced compared to comparable rugs…check out http://www.naturalarearugs.com.
I love how the one in my bathroom feels underfoot. Very cool in summer.
fern, I would *love* to have your weathered wood floors! Thanks for the info on the bamboo mats.
Thank you soooo much for the tip about the natural rugs. I want to take out my carpeting and put in hardwood floors later this year. I also wanted to get some natural rugs since my cat has asthma. The bamboo rugs will be perfect!
I love the look of bare wood floors but, as I prefer sitting on the floor even when the sofa is free, rugs are more comfortable !
Hi nicole 86! I’ve been sitting on our wood floor for a few months now — and yes, I think a small rug might be nice. :-)
For my home bare wood is the only way to go.
I work in a spa and we have the Flor carpet tiles. The best part about them is that if just one small area is ruined b/c of a wax mishap or something similar we can just pull up that square and replace it. They work great for that.
janet, I love that feature — when we stained one of ours, we just moved that tile to a less visible spot. :-)
What a cool idea – thanks for posting this!
I prefer a mixture of hardwood and carpet, depending on the room.
Glad you like it, Luke!
I love this. We have to tear apart our living room this summer to replace 1939 electrical wiring. I also want to pull up the 1970’s shag wall-to-wall. I would love hardwood floors-but ours are unfortunately very soft 1865 vintage wood that splinters and can’t be refinished. I think these tiles would work great! Our floors are not exactly even though (they have a noticeable sag). Would this be a problem?
TrishB, that’s a good question! I think it would depend on just how much your floor sags. The tiles aren’t rigid, but they’re not floppy either. I’d give FLOR a call and ask them; I’m sure they’ve had experience with this!
A cool idea is to mix the square colors every other one. I saw that on a design show, and it looked fantastic.
Great tip, Micah — I like how you can customize the “design” to fit your tastes, and the room.
We have the Flor carpet tiles in one room and like them very much. We went with the Fedora style in a walnut/cayenne/brick/chartreuse pattern that we laid out ourselves.
In theory, I’d love to have bare floors for total ease of clean-up, especially with a small flock of parrots freely patrolling the house for much of the day. In practice, getting them refinished hasn’t been the highest priority in our household budget.
Thanks for sharing this! I have seen this post in the past but didn’t pay attention to it.. my new place has atrocious carpeting and something like this would be perfect! Thanks!
Our carpeting is getting old and I had pieces of carpeting in my dorm room when I was in college. We just put tape on the back. We would have to do hardwood over the bare concrete and then put in carpet tiles. Our cats are getting old so we weren’t going to do anything right now. I like a lot of plain white and burl wood, that’s what we have now.