How You Used Carpet In A Work Environment?
With all commercial premises, it’s extremely important that you make the environment safe and secure for both employees and your customers. Likewise, one of the most important considerations when moving into a new premises or refurbishing an existing one is to ensure the flooring is fit for purpose.
Carpet is one of the most common flooring materials, especially in commercial buildings such as offices, and it’s easy to see why. Carpeting the area means you have a vast choice in colours and styles, a relatively low cost and the ease of installation. Carpets however are not a good fit for all areas within a commercial building so careful consideration needs to be taken before coming to an informed decision.
Here at National Testing we’ve put together some pros and cons when considering carpeted areas so you can see what options are best for you, whilst keeping your workplace a safe environment.
The Pros
As we’ve mentioned, there are always a wide range of options when it comes to carpeting the floor, you can choose from a range of colours, materials and durability to ensure you create the right environment for your business, in turn offering great flexibility to the overall design.
Carpet is also a great solution for commercial offices that want to get the area up and running as fast as possible whilst also making a significant cost-saving. Opting for floor tiles can mean that your new floor can be laid within a matter of hours, creating a professional look in fast and efficient manner. It’s also great for areas where you want to minimise noise, as carpet can absorb the hustle and bustle of the office corridors, meaning your employees can work in a quiet environment with less distraction.
The Cons
In a commercial environment which is prone to coffee spills and wear and tear from desks and chairs, carpets can get dirty, stain easily and become damaged over time. This can not only affect the overall look of your business’s professional image, but also create slip hazards due to loose floor tiles and worn friction. In order to prevent this from happening, you will need to invest time and money in cleaning and maintaining your carpet on a regular basis.
As carpet can wear quickly, a top tip is to only carpet areas where necessary, if not you may find yourself having to replace large areas of flooring for only a small stain, scuff or worn area. Although cost effective, if you are needing to replace the whole carpet regularly it can soon become an expensive option.
Neglecting wear and tear of your carpeted areas will inevitably lead to reduced grip, increasing slip potential. This can be highly detrimental to your business if employees or customers have a slip or trip accident within your workplace as you are responsible for the health and safety of anyone who enters your premises. Having carpeted areas regularly checked for slip resistance by a professional is also an invaluable task - ensuring your carpet is still offering at least the recommended amount of slip resistance year on year.
Considerations
It is recommend that you consider carpet in areas with low traffic and away from abrasive footwear which is likely to cause wear and tear. Secondly, when you are choosing the material of the carpet, be realistic with how durable you need it to be for your environment. For example, in a manufacturing office or high footfall area you should avoid soft material and opt for heavy duty carpeting or choose a more hard wearing material.
It is vital that you carry out risk assessments prior to laying any new flooring and once laid, have these need to be inspected by a professional on a regular basis to ensure that slip resistance is at, or above, the legal requirements. If you would like more information on getting your carpet slip resistance tested, or need to know what is required of you as a business, please >contact us today.