When you can’t find a rug the right size, color, or style, you can create your own custom sized rug with carpet tiles – and choose the colors and style, too!
Rugs, rugs, I love rugs. I’m a compulsive buyer of rugs. They do so much for your space, from making it cozier, to pulling it all together, and adding color and style that matches the rest of the room. But there are some instances when a rug (or wall to wall carpet) just doesn’t work.
Have you ever spent hours looking online for the perfect rug for a particular space? You finally find a style you like, and then realize that it doesn’t come in the size you want (why are rug sizes so random?), or it’s made of the wrong type of material, or it’s out of stock. OMG, I have been there so many times! Even with all the filtering capabilities, finding the perfect rug is really, really hard – especially for weird-sized spaces.
Three and half years ago, we redid our entire home office, ripping up the wall to wall carpet and adding vinyl plank flooring, and really thinking through how to use the space. It’s kind of odd room because it goes the entire width of the house, but it’s kind of long and skinny.
We decided to break up the room into two very distinct work areas. The east side we put a beautiful refinished drafting table with enough room for me to do crafts, or for either Jon or I to just spread out papers or whatever.
The west side was where we created a built-in two-person desk (with help from Jill and her amazing carpentry skills). It worked out perfectly because there wasn’t much wasted space as we have a big closet across from the desk. The only issue was that I wanted to put a rug down to really define that as a distinct area. But when I went looking for a rug, it was impossible to find a rug that size. Runners were too narrow, and rectangular ones were too wide. What to do?
You probably know where this is going from the title of the post. Yes, I got the idea to use carpet tiles and make my own custom rug. I thought I was a complete genius, but I’m not the first person to think of this. In fact, the company FLOR makes it really easy to do this, and even has an online tool to help you create the perfect rug (Just FYI, this post is not sponsored by FLOR- I’d tell you if it was).
How to make a custom rug with carpet tile
So, here are the steps to creating your own custom sized and styled rug using carpet tile.
First, map out the size you want. I needed a rug that was roughly 7 feet long and 4 feet wide. I had some wiggle room, as I didn’t need it exactly that size, but it was a good starting point.
Second, go out and find the tiles you like. You can do the whole rug of one type of tile, or you can do like I did and make a border in a different color. You could do a patchwork tile rug (I’ve done this too). You can mix and match them to your heart’s content.
Third, you need to figure out how to configure the tiles to create the size and design you want. Different brand’s tiles come in many different sizes. FLOR tiles are 19.7″ square, which seems random but it’s a more even number in centimeters, so it actually makes sense. Though it made the math a little trickier. A lot of tiles come in 12 inch or 14 inch squares.
This is how I mapped my rug out:
I decided to do beige tiles with a blue border. I figured that two beige tiles together (19.7 + 19.7) gave me 39.4 inches. Since I wanted a rug roughly 48 inches wide, I decided to do a 3″ blue border on each size, giving me a total width of 45.4.” Close enough. I could have made it exact, but I really had no need to.
Then I figured out the length the rug to be roughly 7 feet long, so 4 tiles (19.7 X 4) gave me 78.8 inches, and the 3 inch border on both sides gave me 84.8 inches, or just over 7 feet.
Deciding on your cuts
So I knew I needed 8 total beige tiles. That was easy. But the border was a little tricker. Since I only wanted a 3 inch border, that meant that I would have to cut the tiles. I knew I wanted three inch strips, so I divided the size of the tile (19.7) by the width I needed (3) and realized I could get 6 3 inch strips out of each tile.
I needed 12 3 inch strips so you would think that I just needed two tiles right? Wrong. Don’t forget about the corners! I also needed 4 3X3″ corners to finish it off. Which meant I actually needed to get 3 blue tiles.
Did I lose you at the cutting part? Don’t fret, the tiles cut quite easily with a utility knife. Just score the back several times, separate it and then use your knife to cut off any straggly bits. FLOR will actually pre-cut your tiles for you as well into whatever size you want (for a price, of course).
This is where you can get super creative. You can cut different color tiles on the diagonal and then mix them up to create fun patterns. Or just do a boring old border like me.
Assembling your carpet tile rug
Now you may be wondering, how do I actually put this thing together? Well, it depends on the type/brand of carpet tile you get. For FLOR tiles, they give you “FLOR dots.” These are basically circular shaped industrial strength stickers that you place on the bottoms of the tiles at the intersection with other tiles. So one FLOR dot will join four tiles together by placing the dot where the four tiles meet. They’re pretty easy to use and fairly strong, though I did need to replace a few.
If you decide to use a brand other than FLOR, you can still buy the FLOR dots, and I think this might be the easiest way to put a rug together. I’m sure there are other creative ways to do it as well.
Other tips for a successful carpet tile rug
Use a rug pad under your carpet tile rug. This will keep everything happy and put together. After starting out without one, we realized we needed one and got this rug pad from Amazon. It worked out great, because you can easily trim it to the exact size you need. Game changer!
Avoid placing the rug where you’ll be rolling an office chair over the edge constantly. This is a mistake I made and I had an issue with one of the border pieces getting disconnected all the time. If I made the rug a bit wider, that would’ve solved the problem. It’s fine to roll over the rug, but when you roll over the edge, it gets dicey.
Other uses for carpet tile
Custom rugs aren’t the only thing I’ve done with carpet tile. They are also great for use in pet areas or areas where you know there might be some kind of very messy “accident.” I have a very vomity cat and three house bunnies, so yeah… When we converted the guest bedroom into a bunny room for Albus and Jazzy, we ripped up the wall to wall carpet, and then decided to lay industrial strength carpet tiles down over the subfloor. First, we sealed the floor with odor blocking primer (just a little insurance!), and then laid the tiles down.
The advantage of doing this is that 1) It was really affordable and 2) if there’s a really bad accident, you don’t have to rip the entire carpet up; you can just replace the tile in question. It’s worked really well!
These are the carpet tiles we used for that project. They were much cheaper in price than the FLOR ones, and for this particular use, they worked perfectly. I can see this also being a good solution for a basement or a home gym.
Thanks for reading. I hope this gave you some good ideas for how you can make your own custom rug using carpet tiles. I think it’s a really creative way to get the perfect sized rug while also letting you be in charge of the colors, styles, and textures. Do you have a good tip? Add it below!
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