Beginner's Guide to Carpet and LVT
Sep 14, 2021
The most common finishes used in Libraries and other commercial buildings, aside from paint, is carpet and LVT. This week I want to cover the bases in carpet and LVT specs to hopefully give you a good starting point. There is an endless amount of information on these two flooring materials. I could probably teach a class on it in fact. But I feel like that's so much more information than you might need in a beginner's guide. So for now, I'll go over the basics and tell you what my top considerations are when selecting carpet and LVT for my spaces. And at the end, I'll even give you all the links to my resource library favorites.
CARPET
There are many different types of carpet but the two main topics I want to discuss are broadloom and tiles or planks. There are pros and cons for either option and this is just a quick breakdown of both as well as why and how I apply them to different projects. Let's begin with broadloom. Most of the time, broadloom carpet is going to be less expensive than it's equal in carpet tile. Meaning that if you have a choice of the broadloom option or the carpet tile option of a single collection, the up-front cost of the broadloom is going to be cheaper. That having been said, you will also purchase more waste for all the extra cuts that have to be made with broadloom, so in the long run you may come out pretty close to even.
The choice to use broadloom is typically a preference issue but sometimes it makes sense for certain applications to use broadloom instead of carpet tile. If you decide to put carpet on stairs for instance, it often makes more sense to use broadloom.
As for carpet tile and carpet planks, you have a great deal of pros so it's no surprise that it has become the most popular carpet style around. In fact, I almost never have reps come in with broadloom carpet anymore. With carpet tile, you have less waste and it is so much easier to store the attic stock. You also order less attic stock since it requires less cuts. 5% on top of you what you need to complete the job is a good number for that by the way. But by using pressure-sensitive adhesives, you can pull up random tiles when you need to replace one so your facilities and maintenance teams generally love them. And while they will be a bit more expensive than their equal in broadloom, they have come a very long way since they were first introduced to the interiors scene so prices are more than affordable for some really nice styles now.
SPEAKING OF PRICING
A safe budget-friendly material-only range for carpet tile runs from about $15.00 to $25.00 per square yard. You can usually tack on about $10.00 per square yard for a decent installation fee to get your overall price per square yard. Also, keep in mind that these measurements are very different from square footage. To get the cost per square foot, you take your material or install cost (whichever one you prefer to work with) and divide by 9. So in other words, if you have an install cost of $35.00 per square yard, you're actually paying about $3.89 per square foot.
LVT
LVT, or Luxury Vinyl Tile, is one of my favorite products to work with. And it's so much nicer now than when it first showed up. You can get many different options so you aren't dealing with the old linoleum patterns you saw in homes when you were a kid. There are stone looks, wood looks of course, and even fabric looks. You have pieces that appear to be hand-scraped to add definition and detail. And the images most often come from a process of photographic technology so that your appearance is the exact high-definition image of the real thing covered in layers upon layers of protective materials to create a highly durable and photo-realistic flooring option.
Commercial LVT should have what the flooring industry refers to as a 20 mil wear layer which in laymen's terms just means it's considered to be commercial grade. You can go higher for much heavier traffic areas but never lower. You will find yourself in the residential zone then and that's not the goal in commercial or Library design. One of my favorite things about today's LVT is the height difference. They now create most LVT to be what I call "carpet-pile height". This means no transitions because the LVT is the same height as the carpet you're using. There are no sound issues with LVT but you can add a layer of cork underlayment if you have any concerns about it. In fact, you can actually purchase LVT now with the cork or added sound protection already applied to each individual plank.
LVT PRICING
LVT is priced per square foot and a good standard range is about $5.00 to $7.00 per square foot install cost. You will pay more for a higher wear layer but again, unless you just know that your traffic patterns are a serious issue, 20 mil will be more than sufficient for most projects.
INSIDE MY RESOURCE LIBRARY
So that's pretty much it for a quick beginner's version of what to know about carpet and LVT. The only thing left is to take you into my resource library and leave you with the links to a few of my favorites. Browse below and reach out to me in my DIY Library Design Facebook group if you have any questions about your projects.
