Colorful floors. Quiet hallways.

colorful floor

For a facility with plenty of open space and very few doors, the ability to absorb the noise of kids constantly switching classrooms was a big deal.

Reading friends of Aledo, Texas needed new flooring for their recent renovation. As a school with a pre-K and kindergarten curriculum, they had several requirements for this new flooring: It had to be fun. It had to help with noise. And it had to be easy to clean.

Working with Jeff Green of FloorPartners, the school chose Interface’s Studio Set™ luxury vinyl tile (LVT) for its classrooms and hallways. Multi-colored planks run from classroom to classroom in bright zig-zag patterns. In choosing the flooring, he says, “Studio Set had everything we wanted as far as sound quality, and the versatility of the product allowed us to create a really unique design.”

Flooring that performs on many levels

Almost a year after completing the renovation, Reading Friends owner Diane Taylor is a convert. “I was hesitant [about how the LVT] would absorb the constant noise of the kids switching classrooms, but it really has worked!” she says. For a facility with plenty of open space and very few doors, that’s a big deal. “I am so impressed by how easy [Interface LVT] has helped absorb the sound in our hallways and classrooms.”

Additionally, intensive floor maintenance has become a thing of the past. School staff are able to spend more time with the kids and less time making the floor look nice. According to Diane, “it really was the perfect flooring for the high-traffic, highnoise areas of our school.”

In fact, because of the success of this project, the entire Aledo Independent School District is considering designating Interface carpet and LVT as part of its standard flooring for all its facilities. From experience, Jeff Green explains, “Interface carpet tile is a real idiot-proof product. And as far as LVT, it’s a matter of getting people to experience it in their schools to trust that it’ll meet their needs.”

interface.com

This article originally appeared in the School Planning & Management September 2019 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Surging Demand for Student Housing Fuels Major Campus Investment Opportunities

    University leaders throughout the U.S. are accelerating plans to modernize and expand student housing as enrollment stabilizes and demand for on-campus living rebounds. Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicates that total postsecondary enrollment is projected to grow through the end of the decade, with undergraduate enrollment alone expected to increase by more than 8 percent by 2030.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Myrtle Grove Elementary

    Phased Construction Keeps Students on Campus During Rebuild

    When Escambia County School District needed to replace most of Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla., it had three distinct challenges: honor the school's legacy in the community, bring state-of-the-art learning environments to the county, and be seamlessly built on the same site as the active school campus.

  • school building with glowing circuit board patterns

    AI Is Coming to Schools — But Most School Buildings Still Run on Institutional Memory

    As school districts race to introduce AI into classrooms, administration, and curriculum planning, another conversation is happening behind the scenes: How prepared are school facilities themselves for the operational demands AI will create?