Good Questions: How To Protect My Wood Floor?

Hello AT,

Can you or your readers suggest a simple way to protect the wood floor around my desk chair. I try to avoid rugs and I have not found any other choices that both protect the floor and look good and match the look of my place. I am open minded to a small rug if that is the best choice, but wanted to make sure I have considered other options. Any ideas?

Thanks, JK

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Dear JK,

This is a great question and before we get into a few solutions, it is good to know that different wheels will have a far different effect on your floor (so your chair choice can be important). For example, our officemate has a vintage Eames workgroup chair that has slowly and steadily eaten THROUGH the floor, while our Leap chair hasn't made a dent. Long story short: better wheels = better floor.

Of course the classic way to protect a floor or carpet is to put down a plastic surface under your chair. These are inexpensive and work, but not too pretty.

In your case, we would buy some FLOR tile to make a small stationary carpet area right around your chair and under your desk. FLOR are inexpensive and THIN so that rolling on them would be no problem. You can also change them easily should you get tired of them or want to change your style.

Another good solution is BOLON vinyl sisal. This is tough, attractive and thin enough for rolling as well. You can find it at Curran and SisalCarpet.com.

Anyone else???

Comments (10)

Its not just better wheels but wheels designed for hardwood floors. I just ordered an office chair and specified that I wanted the soft wheels for hardwood floors and I dare say that if you search around you should be able to find replacement wheels for your chair.

One of my friends used FLOR to create a stand-alone rug and said the pieces kept coming up - and even worse, the adhesive was almost impossible to remove from his wood floor. I would recommend a Chilewich mat for this purpose, they have a lot of mixed brown and darker tones and are also very thin. There's a great selection at Unicahome.com.

could you some how wrap the surface of the castors? at first i was thinking cork, but maybe some sort of fabric tape that wouldnâ€™t interfere with the rolling...

I'm looking for a similar solution, if anyone wants to chime in.... the oak floor under our dining table/chairs tends to get scuffed and scratched up. I hestitate to put a real rug under the table, as I have a 6-year old. Does anyone have another solution? The Chilewich vinyl rugs would fit the bill if they were big enough (I'm looking right now for a 60" round table).

For JK, the wood chair mats look like a great idea.

My parquette is quite sensitive since it was renovated. I simply bought rubber wheels for my chair and it works. There is no damage on my floor since then.

You could probably get bigger softer wheels that will fit your chair. The wheels you've got on there now are really bad for scratching floors, in my experience.

The other thing you could do is take the wheels off altogether and put felt pads on the bottom of the legs instead.

I'd alter the chair rather than cover up that floor, fo shizzle.

I had/have the same problem. Wore the finish off my floor on two occassions (using all kinds of refinishing products to restore). Now, following water damage (a separate story) have a gorgeous hard maple floor.

Thought about the Ikea floor protector.

Think this might be a better (but pricier) solution:

http://www.castercity.com/casters-for-wood-floors.htm

May do both.

Thanks for the comments.

Recently installed my entire living area and reading room with brazilian cherry wood floor. My problem was the hard plastic wheels on my chair was starting to causing scratches mark on the new floor. After some research online, there seems to be two solutions to this problem, one is to use a chair mat and the other method is replacing the original hard plastic chair wheels with a softer wheels. The chair mat solution was very limited in the sense that the wheels must not roll out of the mat area. After reading many other user's review, bought a set of the softer polyurethane wheels to replace the original hard plastic wheels. So far it works very well preventing any further scratch to my floor. The wheel also roll quitely and smoothly.

http://www.cernell.com/hardwood_floor_caster_wheel_p/cw50mmpb.htm

Can't think of any better product in protecting hardwood floor. Thanks for sharing.