Talk Carpet Analysis: With a world going through one of its most significant global challenges in a century, we know that our cities and spaces will not be the same as what we left behind pre-pandemic. As Europe and the USA are now going through the second wave of substantial restrictions, it is becoming more apparent that we want to meet face to face, socialize, and connect in person. Most office workers are looking forward to returning to the office and spending most of their workweek at the office.
New needs and expectations in workplace design will come out of this pandemic. However, many of these were already present pre-COVID. The extensive WFH period is speeding up the implementation of these new needs. One of the main changes will be the end of the large open space offices and the introduction of a more closed off environment, offering the coziness of home. Noise reduction plays a considerable role in achieving such an atmosphere: acoustic panels come into play, together with soft floor coverings such as carpets.
Best-equipped to replace hard surface flooring in workplace environments are flatweave carpets. Immensely popular in Scandinavia for many reasons, they are a hybrid between hard surface flooring and soft surface carpets. Densely woven from recycled nylon, the flatwoven flooring has the acoustic benefit of a traditional carpet combined with a hard surface’s minimal and modern look. This specific type of floor covering has been steadily finding its way into American workplace design but is seeing exponential growth in recent months due to the changing requirements for office design. Companies such as Netflix and Google are considered trendsetters for future work environments and are now installing flatweave carpets in their offices.
A study from the Virology Journal on the effect of temperature on persistence of SARS-CoV-2 on common surfaces will add to carpets’ resurgence in spaces. The research has shown that the perseverance of COVID-19 on a porous surface is significantly shorter than on a non-porous surface. After just 1 hour of drying at room temperature, the amount of virus recovered from cotton swatches was approximately 99% less than for comparable virus recovery time points for non-porous material.
Several carpet manufacturers are now increasing their offering of flatweave carpets, with most notably Scandinavian companies such as Bentzon and ege Carpets. As the European leader market leader in flatwoven carpets, ege Carpets introduces a new low-cost flatweave carpet tile to answer this design trend. Based on the current climate, the Una Brick Ecotrust collection sets out to become one of the hottest carpet introductions of 2021.
