Floors specified
for a building
full of traffic.

A commercial floor has a harder job than a floor at home. It takes hundreds of shoes a day, rolling chairs, carts and a cleaning routine that will never be gentle with it. It also has to go down on a schedule that keeps the doors open. We handle commercial work the way we handle everything else: samples in your hand at the showroom, a free estimate, a measure at the property, then installation by our own crews.

The spaces we floor.

Offices, showrooms and schools cover most of the commercial work that comes through the door. Each one asks for something different from the floor, and the right answer usually comes down to how the space is cleaned, how heavy the traffic is and how quickly a damaged area needs to be put right.

Why carpet tile carries so much of it.

Carpet tile, sometimes called modular carpet, is the workhorse of commercial flooring for reasons that have nothing to do with looks. It arrives in squares or planks, so it goes down without the wide seams of broadloom and it gets around columns, casework and odd corners with far less waste. When a square is stained, burned or torn, you lift that square and set a new one in place. Keep a box of attic stock from the original run and the repair matches, because the dye lot matches.

It also does the quiet work that people notice without naming it. Carpet absorbs sound instead of bouncing it down a hallway, which is why it keeps showing up in classrooms and open offices. Low, dense loop constructions hold their shape under traffic lanes, and solution dyed fiber, where the color runs all the way through the yarn instead of sitting on the surface, holds its shade through repeated commercial cleaning. If you want broadloom instead, we carry that too. See carpet and carpet tile for how the fibers and constructions compare.

Luxury vinyl and the hard surfaces.

Where the floor has to be waterproof, or has to take carts and equipment, hard surface takes over. Luxury vinyl plank and tile is the most common answer: waterproof through the body of the plank, warmer and quieter underfoot than tile, and available in glue down formats that stay put under rolling loads. The number that matters most is the wear layer, measured in mils. Residential grade product is not built for a building full of people, so a commercial job wants a thicker wear layer and a commercial warranty behind it.

Sheet vinyl is still the right call in spaces where seams are the enemy, since fewer seams means fewer places for water to get underneath. Tile belongs at entries and in wet areas, where its hardness and its slip rated finishes earn their keep. Laminate has a place in lighter commercial rooms that stay dry. The full range is on the flooring pages, and the same lines are on the showroom floor to walk on.

Specify it for the traffic, not the photo.

Most commercial flooring problems trace back to a product chosen for how it looked on a sample board rather than what the space does to it. A few things we work through before anything is ordered:

• The subfloor. Concrete slabs hold moisture, and moisture is what lifts adhesive and curls a plank. Slabs get checked and prepped before a commercial floor goes over them.
• Rolling loads. Chair casters and carts punish a floor differently than feet do. That points toward glue down installations and denser constructions in the rooms that see them.
• Cleaning. Whoever cleans the building will use what they already own. The floor should suit that routine rather than fight it.
• Transitions and thresholds. Where carpet tile meets vinyl, or a new floor meets an old one, the transition gets planned rather than improvised at the end.
• Attic stock. Ordering a little extra from the same run is the cheapest insurance in commercial flooring. Two years later it is the only way to make a repair disappear.

How a commercial project runs.

It starts at the showroom, or with a call. Bring the square footage, the rooms and a rough schedule, and someone who sells and measures floors every day will walk the options with you. From there the estimate is free, and the measure happens at the property, on the actual subfloor, with the doorways and transitions accounted for. Tell us how the building is used and when each area can be released, and that sequence goes into the estimate before anything is ordered.

Then the crews take over. Our installation crews have 15 or more years of experience, and most of them are 25 or more year installers. That is the part customers write about afterward, and it is why the tagline has stuck: get it right the first time. Brands we carry include Mohawk, Pergo, Godfrey Hirst and Karastan.