Acoustic Carpets

The two acoustic problems a floor causes

Airborne reverberation: your voice bounces off the tile floor, doubling the room's reverberation time and hurting speech intelligibility. Every hard-floored office has this problem.

Impact noise transmission: footsteps, dropped items, and rolling chair wheels vibrate through the floor structure into the room below. In offices and hotels, this is the number-one guest complaint.

Carpet doesn't just look nicer — it solves both problems simultaneously with a single retrofit.

Carpet tiles vs broadloom — which for which application

Carpet tiles (500×500 mm modules) are the commercial default. They install with a peel-and-stick backing, allow individual replacement of damaged sections, and offer design flexibility through mixing colours and patterns. The pick for offices, retail, healthcare.

Broadloom (roll goods, 4 m wide) delivers a seamless finish preferred for auditoriums, cinemas, and hotel corridors. Installs with adhesive over the whole floor area. Better acoustic isolation because there are no seams to leak sound.

Pile height and acoustic backing — the two variables

Higher pile = more absorption, softer feel underfoot, longer wear life on commercial grade. Standard commercial pile (7–9 mm) handles typical office reverberation. High-pile acoustic (10–12 mm) is spec'd when acoustics matter more than economy — cinema aisles, auditorium seating, hotel corridors.

The backing is where impact-isolation happens. Standard commercial backing dampens some impact noise. Integrated acoustic underlay (a foam or rubber layer bonded to the carpet backing) delivers 15–25 dB improvement in IIC (Impact Insulation Class) over hard flooring. For offices above bedrooms or hotel rooms above dining, this is the important spec.

Installation and pattern options

Carpet tile install is a peel-and-stick over prepared subfloor. A two-person crew can carpet a 1,000 sq ft office in a day. Pattern options include quarter-turn (subtle grid), monolithic (uniform look), and colour-block (design feature).

Broadloom install requires a smoother subfloor prep and adhesive application. Slower to install but delivers the seamless commercial-grade finish for premium applications.

Wear grades — matching the traffic

Light commercial: reception areas, private offices with low traffic. Wear life 5–7 years.

Standard commercial: open-plan offices, meeting rooms, corridors. Wear life 8–10 years.

Heavy commercial: cinemas, retail, hotel lobbies, high-traffic corridors. Wear life 10–12 years, higher upfront cost but lower cost-per-square-foot over life.

Match the grade to the actual traffic — over-spec'ing wastes money, under-spec'ing means replacing carpet after 4 years. We spec by traffic pattern on project-scale enquiries.

Maintenance and long-term care

Vacuum weekly with a commercial-grade vacuum. Professional deep-clean quarterly for high-traffic areas, annually for lower-traffic. Spot-clean stains immediately with mild carpet cleaner.

Individual damaged tiles replace in minutes. This is why carpet tiles win over broadloom for spaces where damage is likely (offices with coffee, retail, healthcare).