The ceramic floor tile made the room feel cold and unwelcoming. Unfortunately, it also wrapped up along the wall to act as a baseboard, so it would have been unnecessarily complicated to rip it all out. (Guess how I know–Andy removed one of the baseboard tiles and it took half the drywall with it. Plan aborted.) Our solution was to add traditional baseboard on top of the tile along the wall, and to use FLOR carpet tiles on the floor.
I found this pattern (Fall in Line-Jade) of FLOR tiles on sale (marked down from $13 per tile to $8.49 per tile), so I got a good deal. (Also check the outlet page.) The wall colors were inspired by the stripes in the FLOR tiles.
I love carpet tiles for a kid’s room not only for the pattern and color, but also for practical reasons–when the kids inevitably spill, we can replace the affected squares rather than scrapping the whole carpet or living with gross stains.(Be sure to buy more tiles than you need for just this purpose. We have an extra box in reserve.) As an added bonus, FLOR is an eco-friendly company–more than 50 percent of the materials in the carpet are made from recyclables.
The carpet tiles come with instructions on how to place them so I won’t belabor it here, but essentially you need to start in the middle and work your way to the walls, so that you’re making cuts along the walls and not in the middle. Because this room was a large rectangle, Andy worked his way in a cross pattern, like so.
You can see the improved baseboards in this shot, as well as the cuts that still need to be made along the walls.
And here it is with the cuts complete. For some reason, it did not occur to me to move all of this crap out of the way before taking the photo. Realism.
By total coincidence, and for the same reasons, I am considering using the exact same FLOR tiles in my kids’ new playroom, and your post has been a great resource for getting an idea of what the Fall in Line Jade tiles look like installed. I am replying in the hopes that you check these and can provide a little insight. I see that you have many rolling toys in your playroom, and I wonder how well these work on the carpet tiles. Since Fall in Line is not a completely flat design, I am especially curious about whether my children will be able to roll matchbox cars on it. Also, do you think that the colors in Fall in Line will be suitable for a room decorated with muted sea and sand colors, or will the lime/celery tones in the carpet stand out and clash with our beige walls and aqua decor?
Hey there! So about whether rolling toys work on the carpet – the answer is, mostly. They won’t get the same distance with the matchbox cars – they won’t shoot across the room the way they do on hardwood – but the carpet is flat enough that my kids play trains on the floor all the time with no complaints. It’s very low pile. And I think your color scheme will work well with these – the stripes are all thin, so whichever color you enhance on the walls will be the ones that you really notice in the carpet, and the stripes include both beige and aqua. Hope that helps!
Thank you! I am ordering the carpet today.