Carpet Planks or Carpet Tiles?
Carpet tiles have long been a favorite choice for commercial flooring. They provide style, comfort, and durability while being easy to install and maintain. But today carpet tiles are facing competition from a new young cousin: carpet planks.
While carpet tiles are generally square, carpet planks are long rectangles. They’re called planks due to their resemblance to the shape of wood flooring.
Similar in style and function to carpet tiles but with advantages all their own, carpet planks provide home and business owners with new and exciting options. So how can you decide whether carpet tiles or planks are right for you? Let’s take a look at some of the special features of each to help you decide which is the best fit for your home or business.
All in the Family
Carpet planks are newer and not as well-known as carpet tiles, but the tiles and planks are actually very closely related and have a lot in common. Like carpet tiles, carpet planks are modular and can be arranged in a variety of ways.
Both planks and tiles are easy to install and DIY-friendly. They’re designed to be resilient and durable. And if they do become damaged or worn, the affected planks or tiles can be removed and replaced without replacing the entire floor.
All of these features make both carpet planks and tiles excellent choices for residential and commercial use. So how can you decide between them? Here are the key factors to consider.
Size and Shape of Your Space
When deciding between carpet tiles and planks, consider the size and shape of the floor that you’re covering. Is it a large room or a narrow hallway? Is the space one big square or does it have nooks and crannies? How much floor, total, do you need to cover?
The size and shape of your space may determine the tile you use. Consider that a 24 X 24 tile is 4 sq. ft., a 18 X 36 is 4.5 sq. ft., and a 12 X 48 is 4 sq ft. Larger square times may be easier to use in a large space but tile shape and size choice really depends on total coverage and design issues.
Plank installation typically produces a little less waste from cutting to fit; this could save you money, because you’re not paying for square feet of carpet that’s just going to be thrown away.
The shape of the space matters here too. If you have narrow halls or oddly shaped spaces, you’ll generally have less waste if you use planks.
Style Matters
Another factor to consider when choosing between planks and tiles is your style preference. With tiles, you’re limited to a few basic, but attractive, layouts. You can lay out the tiles in a checkerboard type pattern or you can rotate them to form diamonds. Alternately, you can offset the tiles for a brick-style layout. All of these have the advantage of being simple to DIY.
With planks you have more style options but potentially more challenges too. Carpet planks are designed to resemble hardwood flooring, so you can generally arrange them in any style that you could do with hardwoods. This includes the classic parallel hardwood and offset brick layouts as well as ashlar, herringbone, and basket-weave designs.
Planks give you more complicated design options, but these designs can be more complicated to install. Since carpet planks—like carpet tiles—don’t generally need to be glued down, they’re very forgiving and you can easily fix mistakes in the pattern.
Design That Functions
Finally, when choosing between carpet planks and tiles, you should consider how your flooring can be used to delineate spaces and move people from one space to another.
For instance, by using different carpet types and layouts, you can set off one area from another in a large open space, without adding walls or other barriers. Carpet planks can even be used to create a visual border between two or more areas.
Additionally, planks can be useful for creating paths that help people move from one area to another. In technical design terms, these are referred to as “wayfinding cues,” and they can be very helpful for directing the flow of traffic through a space.
When you’re deciding whether to use planks or tiles, or perhaps a combination of the two, keep in mind that your design can shape how people use and move through your space.
Conclusion
Carpet planks and tiles have many of the same advantages, but each has its own special features. Taking all these features into account can help you make the best flooring choice for your home or business.