living room "flor" design

As always, what we went in thinking and what we came out with wouldn't have recognized each other on the street.

I went in desperate for neutrals, figuring this was the only way to brighten up our dim living room.

Husband went into a store that sells modular carpet squares (with the pad built in) wanting cushy comfort. Such things aren't to be had in the traditional sense.

Let's backtrack to describe the journey that led us to the Flor store in Soho.

A few years ago, we visited the apartment of our dear friends (who have written this blog about their adventures in home-owning and fighting with old wallpaper) and were admiring their very unique carpet. They told us it was from Flor, and explained how it worked and how they used it to carpet rooms and hallways without the permanence of wall-to-wall carpet.

I was hooked. I went home, ordered the catalog, jumped on the website and started designing a carpet for our bedroom, which was at that time in desperate need of a rug. A Macy's gift card later, we purchased two area rugs that I'm now completely dissatisfied with, but could improve with a good shampoo. (A future project indeed.)

Fast forward to now, when I realized that an area rug to adequately cover a 12x18' room would cost me more than I was willing to spend. I also realized that I hated 95% of the rugs out there, unless they were miles out of my price range. You see, I live in a pre-war apartment in New York, so I have basically no sound insulation between my floor and my neighbors' ceiling. Sound carries. In fact, it amplifies. I really want to cover as much of the floor as humanly possible.

And then I remembered Flor.



Once we picked out the couch, I got to work looking at neutrals on the web site, hoping the something would be suitable to cushion husband's feet. I jotted down some ideas, felt savvy enough to enter the store and throw jargon around, and promptly didn't go there for weeks. I started looking at lamps and panicking that the lamp shades had to match the rug I hadn't yet bought. I got quite busy.

After a delicious lunch and a fruitful trip to BBB (new pillows! a pastry cutter! two new dish-drying mats, aka: the greatest invention ever! bowls to complete our dish set!), we set out to the Flor store, couch swatch in hand.

At first we just walked around touched the furry walls (a reference to this song from Get Him to the Greek). After spending so much time looking at them online, it was great to see and feel them in person. Thankfully, Husband found a pile height and texture he found cushy enough, both on the wall and underfoot. Yes, we did little dances to properly test the floor samples.

Then we got to work with our designer, Aaron, who took us through basically the entire store after getting a general idea of what we wanted. Or, rather, what I wanted, and what Husband wanted. First, Husband really liked this tonal mix of blue solids, while I worried the rather smooth texture would attract dirt, or at least highlight the dirt that was on it. So we moved toward berbers, neutral colors, and some patterns. I had to tear Husband away from some very bold stripes and all traces of orange (his favorite color, as evidenced by his love of the San Francisco Giants and orange shoelaces). Then we found Fall in Line in Celadon. I took a little convincing (yes, it has orange in it, which is a direct contrast to the cool colors I thought we were looking for, but contrast is a good thing!), but soon enough I had fallen in love.

Compared with straight neutral berbers, Fall in Line was The One.

Husband, however, was less enthused about the the cushiness of Fall in Line. Aaron was not deterred. He moved us back to solids, where he picked out several coordinating colors of Rake Me Over, keeping in mind my penchant for blues and greens. The ultimate combination was born! We shifted, we changed, we pulled things out and put them back out, and ended up with this:

Quickly snapped iPhone pic.

Our new best friend, Fall in Line in Celadon met up with Rake Me Over, a short shag, in Seafoam, Leaf, and Dune. The colors aren't as dark as this picture makes them look (the tones on the website are much closer to what I remember). In spite of the brown of Dune, it's a light, refreshing look. Perfectly "in line" with the crisp, zen style we're aiming for.

Then came the hard part. The design. This is when going to the store (as opposed to using the "FlorBuilder" on their website) and working with a designer really paid off. Sure, we picked 4 tiles we loved, but our wacky room size wanted nothing to do with even numbers. To create an approximately 8x14' rug (keeping 2' of hardwood around the room), we needed 45 tiles. 5 wide by 9 long.

Just taking this 4-tile square and repeating it didn't suit us. It was far too geometric and structured. So Aaron started drawing, picturing a design in which each square-of-four rotated 90 degrees as it repeated. Thanks to our odd number of tiles, or something else mathematical and therefore beyond me, we ended up with some L-shaped 3-tile repetitions. Which, when drawn, we weren't sure if we liked.

A few other designs and about half an hour later, Aaron turned to the FlorBuilder to give us a better visualization of that first design, which turned out like this:

Totally not as odd as we thought, because we hadn't realized that all the colors would make L-shapes, thus creating a fun, Tetris-like pattern.

Being a thorough designer, Aaron reminded us that the stripes wouldn't line up in real life the way they do online, and that  might annoy us. So we thought about rotating some of them 90 degrees to avoid stripe mismatching. I mocked it up, and I love it:

It's quirky, like us, and manages to be neutral without being boring. Rake Me Over has a slightly higher pile than Fall in Line, which Husband seems to think he might trip over (stranger things have happened), but I actually really love it. It gives it more visual and textural interest than simply having different colors and patterns. I'm excited to put it all together!

So we bought it, and saved 50% on shipping costs by coming to the store! That was an extra surprise and a definite treat. It feels like a big expenditure, but compared to similar carpets of that size, it's an absolute steal. We also purchased one extra of each tile in case of crazy stains or something else. Most Flor tiles are synthetic (not wool), so they clean much more easily, but they still feel great underfoot.  While Aaron was designing (and looking like he was getting a headache), I slipped off a shoe and hopped around on our little combo. It's great!

Thus concludes our Flor story! We loved working with Aaron, who was super-accommodating to a couple that can disagree about major design choices. We love that we ended up with something no one else might ever have, and that we really worked with the geometric tile design.

Stay tuned for the update after we install! They should arrive this week! In a perfect world, they'd arrive before Saturday and the couch wouldn't be delivered until the afternoon, but that is not a world I tend to live in.