In a world with more access to technology than ever before, it’s never been easier or more common to set up a home office. If you work from home, you’re naturally going to want a dedicated space to get work done. However, even families with professionals who work out of the home are increasingly likely to set up rooms with workspaces to help meet deadlines, boost productivity, or develop small businesses.

While you’re likely to spend most of your time figuring out details like computing choices, desks, chairs, Internet, and other communication systems set up, it’s also worth paying attention to your flooring choices. We’ve reviewed a range of residential carpeting styles and how they fit into various parts of the home, including family rooms, stairs, basements, and bedrooms. Each environment, while part of your home, has slightly different needs. Today we’ll look at what works best when choosing a carpet for an office at home.

Choose low pile, low profile carpeting for home offices

When choosing carpeting for home and office environments, think low pile, low profile instead of high piles and long fiber lengths. Shorter piles are easier for office chairs with wheels to move through, and are less likely to imbalance heavy equipment and office furniture.

Specific piles that work well include looped berber carpets and textured saxonies. Berbers will typically give you a lower profile than cut-pile carpets, which helps your carpets stay out of your way. Level loop berbers are particularly good, as they are less likely to snag equipment and shoes than berbers where loop heights vary.

For a cozy, homey feel, cut and loop styles are worth considering. You can often find these with short cut fibers and tight loops, and like berbers, they’re available in a range of styles and colors.

Is high pile or soft carpeting ever appropriate for a home office or business?

While it may be tempting to choose thicker piles and styles to lend a warm atmosphere to your office, we don’t recommend it unless you’re going to be frequented by clientele who’d expect such an approach. High pile carpets and longer-fibered carpets like friezes, in contrast, while more comfortable underfoot, are more difficult to maintain. Of course, if your home business or office involves children (e.g., a nursery, family photography, etc), feel free to throw this advice out the window and go in the opposite direction; we’ve seen many clients in these kinds of fields praise lush carpeting as an essential component of their marketing plan.

Don’t rule out commercial carpets if you’re busy enough

If you’ve got high traffic in your office (or better yet, home business), you’ll want to consider commercial carpets. Even if you don’t have a tremendous amount o foot traffic, commercial carpets will provide greater levels of durability, wear-resistance, and overall performance compared to residential carpets, as successful businesses don’t spend time changing carpets every few years, and longevity is worth paying for.

Most commercial carpets will either have very short cut pile styles or leveled looped styles with low profiles. Both styles work well in home offices. In general, a cut pile commercial carpet will lend a more residential, cozy feel, while a level loop style will provide a more industrial, professional look, so it’s really up to the image you’re aiming for when choosing between the two.

Anti-static properties aren’t necessary for most settings

While you might be tempted by carpets advertising anti-static properties for your home office, the truth is that most regular carpets are already going to provide enough anti-static treatments to make additional treatments unnecessary. The clear exception to this is if you run a home office or business with technical and sensitive technology or machinery, such as CAD systems, servers, mainframes, computer or health laboratories, or robotics.

In such situations, investing in carpets that reduce static buildup can be essential for safety and security of individuals and information. For the rest of us, save your money and stick with normal carpeting. If you have static issues with normal carpets, another option to look into is increasing your home’s humidity levels to reduce static electricity buildup. This is far more cost-effective than investing in additional carpeting. We’ve reviewed a number of humidifiers and share recommendations by Oreck and Venta  or Sharp and Dreval here.

…but consider stain and soiling resistance if you eat or drink there

If you treat your home office like a clean room, you can ignore this advice. However, if you either eat in your office or allow others to do so, or frequently have family or clients drop by who have pets or young children, you’ll want to look into stain and soiling resistance. Certain fibers are naturally more resistant to staining than others, such as polyester, but even less resistant fibers can be strengthened by factory treatments, which is where reading your carpet warranty is a good idea to get a good idea of the quality of carpet you’re buying.

Invest in a good carpet cleaner and vacuum

While the success of your business, in most cases, won’t depend on the style or longevity of your carpets, we believe it’s worth investing in quality appliances for carpet care from the start.

While you can save a bit of money at first by choosing the cheapest tools you can find to get a job done, it’s not worth much to save money in the short term only to pay more in the long term, whether in your business, in the carpets you choose, or in the machines you buy to maintain them.

For a buy-it-for life carpet cleaner, we recommend the Bissell 86T3 Big Green. It’s not going to grow your business by itself (unless you’re in the business of cleaning carpets), but it’ll clean your carpets for decades without trouble. For vacuums, we recommend a machine capable of cleaning all piles and all styles, so you aren’t tempted to “upgrade” it in the future. That means a machine like the Miele Complete C3 Soft Carpet or the Miele Compact C2 Electro+. The Soft Carpet is reliable and versatile while the Electro+ offers most of what the Soft Carpet does for less money.

You can buy the Bissell 85T3 Big Green carpet cleaner here on Amazon. You can buy the Miele Complete C3 Soft Carpet here or buy the Miele Compact C2 Electro+ here.

Canadians can buy the Miele Soft Carpet here, the Compact Electro+ here, and the Bissell Big Green here.

If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home cleaning tools by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.