You drive your car around every day, mile-after-mile. And to keep it running smoothly, you need to take care of it—to get under the hood. No matter the make or model, it’s routine to get your oil changed in order to get where you’re going with ease.

But what would happen if you didn’t change your oil, or even changed it incorrectly?  The same principle applies to your commercial floors. Choosing a regular floor maintenance program might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you purchase your commercial floors, but it’s the secret to keeping them looking good and performing their best for years to come. 

A bustling office, education, or even healthcare administrative space can become messy quickly. Because everyone is so busy these days, these messes may not get cleaned up right away or they're simply forgotten about. Even if you have a great janitorial staff, they likely don't have the time to deep clean all the nooks and crannies or even the floors on a consistent basis. The good thing is an easy solution that allows you and your team to focus on your work rather than constantly cleaning.

There are two philosophies when it comes to floor maintenance. The first is to maintain floors on a regular basis. The second is reactionary – when floors start to look less than ideal, a cleaning crew is rushed in to get it back to tip-top shape only to watch its condition begin to deteriorate again. The truth is, proactively maintaining floors is always better than reacting to wear and tear or worse, a catastrophe. When you have a scheduled maintenance program in place, whether it's quarterly, monthly, or even weekly, you’ll actually save more time and money and be better off in the long run.

While it may not seem like it on the surface, floors are a critical component of our lives. If you think about it, we interact with them on a daily basis. Not only do they affect us physically, but did you know they can influence our mood and behavior? For example, you can warm up a space with carpet or carpet tile, making people feel comfortable and at home. When chosen carefully and installed correctly, commercial flooring can create the ideal space for associates and clients. That’s why it’s important to really consider what you’re investing in your floors.

Pointview Elementary, part of Westerville City Schools, wanted to bring all of their students closer together by doing something new and exciting. They decided to create a unique and fun learning environment that would spark their students' creativity. After gathering input from students through personal interviews and drawing inspiration from a water tower behind the school, they enlisted our help to create an ocean-themed floor that brings sea creatures and other treasures to life.

Over 20 years in the making, a recent floors project of ours has an interesting backstory. The Ohio Statehouse needed new carpet in both the House and Senate chambers. Back in the 90s, we installed a custom woven carpet in both, designed by a historical/architectural consultant to replicate what the carpet had looked like in the Statehouse in the 1800s. As with all flooring investments, the time had come to update the carpet. But this time, instead of bringing it into the 21st century, it had to stay true to the original 19th century design.

Let’s face it… the dirt starts right at your front door. Leaves, rain, snow, salt, asphalt crack filler. It’s easy to think you’ll keep it outside where it belongs, but it’s harder to actually put that into practice, unless maybe you have an air-lock vestibule as an entrance. So how do you protect your floors from the year-round elements? Here are some tips.

Back in the day, most carpet came on a 12 foot roll. We fought with elevators or hauled it up flights of stairs. If you were in an occupied space, everything had to come out. Your files, your desk, your Hello Kitty collection. And the problems didn’t end there. Bad stains became part of the landscape you looked at every day while you waited for the rest of the carpet to wear out. The seams raveled. Yarn snags became ten foot long “zippers” when the sweeper got a good hold of them.

When it comes to commercial flooring, you may come across some unfamiliar terms when researching or beginning a project with professionals. To help, we've compiled a handy list that you can reference whenever you need a refresh on these commonly used terms in the world of floors.

Let’s face it, the floors in our workspaces experience tremendous wear and tear at points of entry. Add unpredictable weather to the mix, and your investment loses value. But you can maximize your flooring investment by protecting it from bad weather, whether it’s the salt and snow from a blustery winter or the moisture from a rainy spring.