Factors to Consider When Choosing an Office Flooring

Your brand identity is linked to your office physical workspace. Your office interior design elements speak volumes to your employees, customers, and business stakeholders. In this regard, designing your office space is quite a task because it is part of the branding strategy. Therefore, choosing your office flooring should not be done in isolation but when doing other design elements of your office, including window curtains, walls, furniture, lighting, and any other design accessories.

The combined elements and colors of your office interior design should reinforce your branding efforts and corporate image. Here are factors to consider when choosing an office flooring: brand image, comfort for employees, traffic, maintenance, ease in repair, safety and security and budget.

Factors to Consider in Selecting Office Flooring

1. Your Brand Image

Your office interior decoration should reflect how you want employees and customers to perceive you.  An office is a contact point between you and your customers, and it should communicate a subliminal message to your stakeholders. On this note, your office flooring, furniture materials, décor, and color scheme should, to some good extent, reflect your mission, values, and culture.

There are various flooring designs for offices, and it will depend on how official, casual or trendy your brand is. What is your brand’s color, and would you like to reflect it in your office workspace? By using your brand image to do the workspace design, you will be using a proactive marketing strategy. You can opt to use classical flooring designs and not just go for what is trending in the market. However, if your brand image reflects current trends, you can use it. Using trending flooring styles will require a change of design every three to five years.

On this note, come up with all the interior décor designs of your office, including the flooring type, pattern, and colors. Make a plan by first developing a 3D plan incorporating all the design elements in every office room, including the reception area, showrooms, window displays, private offices, and meeting rooms. To design a floor plan for an office, first, do a 3D plan. The 3D plan should include the flooring design and all the other design elements. Then, you can use the 3D design as a guide to doing your flooring designs which should incorporate other elements like the brand image.

2. Comfortable Working Space

Did you know that an employees’ workspace is one of the determinants of job satisfaction and productivity? Your employees want a comfortable, inviting, visually appealing and functional space because they spend many hours in the office. Therefore, think about their comfort because, unlike customers who come and go, employees spend most of their time working.

3. Climate

Consider how comfortable the flooring type will be during the cold and hot seasons in your location. If you live in a cold place, then wall-to-wall carpeting can be a good option. Also, underfloor heating is a good option, especially during winter.

4. Traffic

How long your office flooring will last depends on traffic and the life expectancy of the floor. You need a commercial-grade flooring type for offices, especially for corridors and reception areas with high traffic. Therefore, they require a sturdy flooring type that is also easy to clean. Durable floors include tiles, vinyl, engineered wood, and luxury vinyl tiles.  Tiles are sturdy, but they may present a safety risk because they are not slip-resistant. They are also not noise-proof.

Thin-pile carpets can be an option in offices where you need to minimize noise. However, carpets are not recommended for offices because they are not easy to maintain especially, for high traffic areas. You can consider installing laminates, engineered wood, vinyl, or luxury vinyl tiles and then installing an underlayment to insulate against noise.

5. Maintenance

When installing an office floor, the cost of maintaining the floor daily should be a major factor to consider.  A dirty office will tarnish your corporate image. Floors with high traffic will get stains, scratches and dents after a short time. Noteworthy, when choosing the color of your office flooring, consider the traffic to the office. Choosing a bright color for a high-traffic area can be disastrous because it will require a regular cleaning regime.

A high-maintenance floor will not be cost-effective in the long run because of high cleaning, repair and maintenance costs.

6. Budget

Before going out to shop, it is essential to have the office space dimensions that require new flooring and your operating budget. Then, look for flooring that is within your budget. Consider the durability of the flooring type as a priority because renovating a floor is expensive.

7. Safety and Security

If your reception area is susceptible to wetness, you also need to consider a slip-resistant flooring type. About being slip-resistant, if a customer or stakeholder falls or slips within your office premises, your organization risks a lawsuit. Therefore, it is important to have a slip-resistant floor to keep your organization from potential liability. Liability or not, who wants their employees, business partners or customers to fall anyway?

An office is one of the brand contact points, and every element of office fixtures should consider the brand image. In this case, when doing office floor plans and designs, it is advisable to use an interior designer specializing in office branding.