Stonecarpet floor in our gameroom

As you can see we have a special type of floor in our gameroom. It has a pinball playfield design in it. This custom design was made in stonecarpet.
Choosing the right type of floor was difficult to choose. We didn't want a black-and-white blocked floor as you can see in many gameroom. We wanted to have something more original. There were many important properties the floor needed to have. It should be easy to clean, resist water and moisture, shouldn't be too cold, be hard and not scratch easily, absorb (or at least not reflect) sounds, ..
Carpet and wood was out of the question, because to reach our gameroom you have to walk through the garden and there's always some dirt or mud on your shoes.. Tiles reflected the sound too much.

As that left out most regular types of floor, we started to look at industrial floors. At a dealer of amusement games we had seen a type of rubber floor, that we liked very much. But when we asked for information about this type of epoxy industrial floors, the problem was that most types are very expensive if you only want a small surface. Only if you are dealing with a large warehouse then the price goes down enough.

We had almost given up hope to find a special type of floor and had decided to just leave it concrete and to paint something on ourselves.
But then we visited a show of building companies and there we discovered stonecarpet. Stonecarpet had all the properties we were looking for ! And you can make your own design in it, we were quickly convinced this was what we were looking for.

If you don't know what stonecarpet it: in a type of epoxy / resin small colored rocks are glued in place. The stones are rounded and fit eachother nicely, which gives a soft feeling. There are no sharp or hard borders at all. It even feels quite warm, what you wouldn't expect if you're thinking of stone. The stonecarpet floor is available in a lot of different colors so you can make your motifs and designs.

Stonecarpet floor installation

Using aluminum profiles or a mold, you can make your own designs in a stonecarpet floor. There are some restrictions however when you want to make complex designs. Er zijn wel enkele beperkingen aan verbonden wanneer je heel complete tekeningen wil maken. If you cut out a mold, the parts next to it can't be laid the same day, they have to be dry first. Only if you use aluminum profiles that you glue onto the floor you can lay both sides of stonecarpet the same day. These aluminum parts however become very expensive if you need a lot of them. A design without the aluminum borders also looks much nicer. That's why we kept the layout of the pinball playfield very basic, so the whole stonecarpet floor could be installed in two days. But if we really wanted to, nothing stopped us from making a real playfield in every detail.

In reality stonecarpet looks much better then in this picture !

Stonecarpet floor maintenance

Now we have this floor for a few years, we know the advantages and disadvantages of stonecarpet. Advantages are like said above: it's very tough, doesn't scratch, feels nice. It's something original, and you can make your own designs in it.

Disadvantages have to do with cleaning and maintenance.
In theory maintenance of a stonecarpet floor is easy: just make everything very wet and then vacuum everything out. In reality I don't like to do this in a gameroom that's filled with expensive electronic machines (the pinball machines). Certainly not in winter, when I can't leave open the door to dry everything out.
As you walk through the garden, you get a bit of dirt or mud on your shoes that you bring into the room, and gets stuck between the small stones. I once broke the glass of a playfield and cleaning everything was also a bit of a problem on this stonecarpet floor. On a smooth floor you can use a broom to wipe everything together, but now the small glass shards stuck everywhere. I had to vacuum to floor multiple times and still sometimes see small parts of glass reflect in the light. And if you spill a drop of paint you really have to clean it immediately because if it dries you'll never get it out..