Floor show

Nowhere in the hospitality design world is the fine line between "safe" and "tasteless" more evident than in carpeting.

There's nothing naffer than a new-build hotel trying to impart a sense of olde worlde grandeur to its interiors with a lush, rococo Axminster design.

These days it's even less forgiveable. Practicality and a lack of scope may have justified recycling the same heavy, traditional patterns before. But there's no excuse now, when computer-aided design (CAD) facilities enable designers and manufacturers to produce a complete carpet design from a few sketches and some colour samples within a day.

Plain carpets may have once seemed unthinkable in hotels. But many luxury hotels are bowing to public taste, spurred on by philosophies such as those of Ian Schrager, owner of New York's plain-carpeted Royalton and Paramount hotels: "If you do something that's aesthetically distinctive, you can charge a higher rate for it. So what if you have to change your carpet twice a year, as long as you're making more money?"

Practical and inexpensive

If plain carpet is too much of an impractical luxury, there is a wealth of lightly patterned, oatmeal or flecked carpets on the market that are restful to the eye, practical, inexpensive, and a welcome change from bedroom pin dot.

Many operators think a traditional pattern is a safe option - it certainly can be. It can also be appropriate to an old, classic building. But think about it: the bright, floral patterns of 30 years ago can be highly offensive to modern eyes. Will anyone in five or 10 years' time really be offended by an expanse of plain carpet?

Fiona Gant, senior designer at Richmond International, is one of many designers who provide hotels with original carpet designs, such as those she designed for the Swallow Hotel, Bexleyheath (small picture). But she is not a modernist for fashion's sake. To anyone seriously concerned about carpets becoming dated, she recommends incorporating a classic motif in a design which uses modern styling and colours. An urn or, as at the aforementioned Swallow, a star pattern, can make all the difference. With CAD, it's even possible to include a rug design into the overall carpet.

Gant is a great fan of bespoke design, and sings the praises of the more flexible carpet manufacturers. She says: "The success of the end product, although we might have complete control over the design, depends on the knowledge, experience and design awareness of the carpet manufacturer's designers.

"It's not as simple as knocking out a carpet from a sketch and a few colour samples. The manufacturer's design team has to have an understanding of the final desired look. It's very hard to get an idea from small samples of how a banqueting carpet will look when it's laid. On that scale, it's a highly dominant element." Gant uses CP Carpets of Kidderminster, which only makes custom carpets, but also rates the design teams at BMK Stoddard.

There will always be a market for traditional designs. As Jacquie Taylor, head of design at CP Carpets says, "they keep selling, so the manufacturers keep making them." It is also much quicker to order a carpet from stock, which can arrive in two weeks; bespoke carpets can take as long as four months to produce.

Taylor believes hotels and restaurants are using unusual carpet designs more competitively. "The trend is theatrical", she says, "and hotel owners are asking their designers to make a statement, previously they tended to stay on the safe side".

This theatrical trend manifests by developing themes and symbols appropriate to the hotel, (such as a Hindu "tree of life" motif developed by Richmond International for The Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi). "Some hotels are really adventurous," says Taylor, who recently completed preliminary designs for a blue leopardskin hotel bedroom (affectionately referred to as the "Bet Lynch scheme").

Even pubs are going for more off-the-wall designs. Taylor says: "We do a lot of carpeting for pubs. Depending on the adventurousness of the designers, it can either be traditional or really wild, like a picture of Sid Vicious for a punk pub."

The message is clear: you don't need to be complacent with your carpeting!