Ask Madelyn: Best Flooring for a Studio

Madelyn,

My husband and I are designing our retirement home in which I will have a designated weaving studio. I can't decide what type of flooring will be best for this area. What do you think is the best flooring choice for a weaving studio?

Thanks,

—Cyndi

Hi Cyndi!

First, how great that you will get to have a designated space! Now to answer your question. Probably, much about the choice you make for flooring will be related to your personal taste and maybe also budget (choosing a feature such as in-floor radiant heating would be costly, for example). I don't think there is necessarily a "best" choice.

In both of the locations that I've created for The Weavers' School, I've installed a good quality, very short-looped nylon-pile carpet. Carpet reduces the noise that a wood or tile floor might create and also keeps the looms from sliding around as the students beat. I do love hardwood floors and have them in some of the rooms in my house, but I've been very happy with the carpet in weaving areas. Daily lint doesn't show the way it would on wood or tile, and the short pile makes vacuuming a quick task. Carpet is also more restful to stand on than a harder surface would be.

For the Weavers' School when it was in Missouri, I found a carpet that I really, really loved. It was a lovely blue, with a dark blue grid of lines that made it look (so appropriately!) like graph paper. I have pieces of it that I still use as coasters, and they are nostalgic reminders. In both of my school studios, the carpet has been glued to the flooring. Both carpets are self-padded so that they are firm and do not move or buckle. —Madelyn