Individuals who enjoy devoting most of their time creating a form of art like painting, sculpting or designing prefer to do so in the privacy of an art studio. While some simply need an art nook with protective floor coverings, other art studios such as those that create bronze statues and huge outdoor installations require rigid and sturdy floorings.
Using Protective Floor Coverings for an Art Studio
Setting up a space as your art nook can easily start with the flooring because you have to establish a physical boundary in which to place your tools, equipment and storage bins and racks. The simplest way to do this is by placing protective floor coverings, as paint or plaster droppings can easily stain carpets, hardwood or make concrete floors slippery.
Hardboard Sheets
If you’re dealing with a carpeted floor, one of the cheapest protective floor covering to install in your art nook are hardboard sheets. The problem with hardboard sheets is that they will not last long as they tend to wear out easily from the frequent chair rolls and the cleaning you make over the area. The sheets also tend to fray at the corners, particularly if some tacking was done to secure them to the carpet.
Snap-Lock PVC Fatigue Relief Tiles
A concrete floor on the other hand will work best with this type of flooring, It’s highly recommended for art studios because they offer fatigue relief as additional benefit aside from being economical, waterproof and non-absorbent. Each tile has a raised base and flexibility that is widely appreciated in industrial sites for its ability to provide fatigue relief.
However, the drawback for this kind of floor covering is that they could puncture or show indentation marks caused by the weight of heavy artworks, furniture or equipment.
Moreover, to avoid the snap-lock tiles from shifting or unlocking under the rigors of everyday chair rolls, it would be best to install them wall to wall.
Modular Garage Tiles
Artists who chose to rent a warehouse because they need larger and sturdier spaces for their visual art works consider interlocking modular garage mats or tiles as the best fit. There are three types of garage floor mats, the rigid plastic type made from PVC, the flexible but rigid mats that also offer fatigue relief, and the wood composite garage floor mats.
Of these three, the wood composite garage mats offer the most in terms of strength and durability. The composite materials used in their manufacture allows a panel to support a vehicle or machinery by up to 4,000 lbs, per square foot.
Wood composite garage mats are ideal because they can be used as cover on cracked or uneven concrete flooring. They function similarly to the composite crane mats used in construction sites but on a much smaller scale.
Composite garage mats can make uneven ground surface smoother and safer. They allow the shift or movement of heavy vehicles and machineries inside the art studio when needing to transport and deliver large visual artworks. Although the trade off is that they are more expensive, they are more sustainable as they do not require frequent replacements.