The commercial carpet segment is getting a little more hip. According to Jenny Rogers, director of creative marketing and sustainability for commercial carpet maker J&J/Invision, the commercial market has taken a welcome turn back to color. This is in sharp contrast to a few years ago, when the market favored what she calls “a tonal, blank canvas.”

“It’s been a welcome reintroduction,” she says of the bursts of color finding their way into commercial carpet. She notes there is no one reason why color is coming back, but it is cyclical. “People are looking for great-looking products at the right budget, especially with today’s economy. It’s important to meet those budgets while also still having new and fresh products, something that people haven’t seen before,” she says.

Of course, perhaps the most important color in commercial is still “green.” When environmental sustainability was first becoming popular, it presented some design challenges because all of the technologies weren’t in place yet, she notes. But now, quite literally, the sky is the limit. “The green movement isn’t going away, the fiber suppliers realize this, and so they’ve continuously gotten better with their technologies. It’s pretty easy to find the right fiber systems and backing systems to make almost any design,” Rogers says.