Flooring for Churches, Mosques and Places of Worship: a Zone-by-Zone Guide

A place of worship asks more of a floor than most buildings do, and asks it in short bursts. For most of the week the hall is quiet. Then a full congregation arrives within ten minutes, sits, stands and kneels for an hour, and leaves through the same doors. During the service a single pair of hard heels on stone can be heard by everyone. Afterwards there is coffee in the hall, candle wax at the front and rain at the entrance. This guide goes through a church, mosque or community hall one zone at a time and lists what to put in the brief.

Zone by zone

Children’s rooms and crèches have the same brief as a nursery, covered in the childcare flooring guide.

The entrance decides how the rest of the floor looks

Most of the dirt a church floor ever sees comes through the doors on wet shoes. The cheapest way to keep aisles and seating areas looking new is to stop that dirt at the entrance: a recessed or surface entrance matting system, long enough that several steps land on it before anyone reaches the main floor. The textile floor starts beyond it. Skipping the matting to save budget is the most common reason a new floor looks tired by the second winter.

Quiet during the service, and what a floor cannot do

There are two kinds of noise in a place of worship. Footsteps are impact noise: on stone, tile or vinyl they are loud where they happen and carry through the building. A textile surface is markedly quieter underfoot, and flocked flooring is tested to an impact sound reduction of ΔLw 21 dB. That is the difference between latecomers being heard by the whole congregation and not.

Reverberation is sound lingering in the room after it is made. It is controlled by ceilings, walls and soft furnishings, not by the floor, and in a church it is often wanted for music and singing. A flooring supplier who promises to fix the echo is overselling. The longer explanation is in what acoustic flooring actually does.

Kneeling, sitting and prostrating

In many places of worship people are in direct contact with the floor: kneeling in a church, sitting and prostrating in a mosque prayer hall, sitting on the floor for a children’s talk. A textile surface is warm in a way stone is not. It also has to be clean, which is where a conventional carpet struggles: what is spilled or tracked in soaks into its backing. Flocked flooring has a sealed backing, so the whole floor can be wet-mopped, extraction-cleaned or steam-cleaned on a regular cycle.

A floor that belongs to the building

Because flocked flooring is digitally printed, the floor can be designed for the building rather than chosen from a catalogue. In a mosque, the prayer rows, borders and the direction of prayer can be printed into the floor, so rows stay straight without separate rugs. In a church, an aisle runner, a border around the sanctuary or a motif taken from the windows can be part of the floor. There is no tooling cost, so a design made for one building costs the same to produce as a stock pattern. See how custom printed floors are made.

Cleaning after a full congregation

Vacuum after services and spot-clean spills the same day; wet-mop, extraction-clean or steam-clean periodically, more often in the entrance zone and the fellowship hall. For candle wax, let it harden, lift it off gently with a blunt plastic scraper and vacuum the pieces; do not try to melt it out with an iron. The full routine is in how to clean flocked flooring.

Tile format makes repairs simple: a damaged tile in an aisle is lifted and replaced from spare stock between services. Order a few percent of spare tiles from the same production batch and keep them in the building.

Fire, slip and the documents a building committee will ask for

Places of worship are assembly buildings, so a fire classification is usually required; confirm the class with the local authority or fire engineer. BON flocked flooring is classified Bfl-s1 to EN 13501-1 (SGS), with ASTM E648 data for North American projects on request. Slip resistance is 0.45 to EN 13893 (SGS), above the 0.30 threshold for low slip potential, which matters where older members walk. Formaldehyde was not detected in SGS testing to GB 18587, and our carpet tile holds CRI Green Label Plus certification for indoor air. The dated report for the batch supplied comes with the order. For writing these into a tender, see how to specify flocked flooring.

A brief for the building committee

• Draw the zones first: matting at the doors, textile in aisles, seating, prayer hall and sanctuary, hard floor in kitchens and toilets.
• Budget for an entrance matting system at every external door.
• Ask for impact sound reduction (ΔLw) for the floor, and treat hall reverberation as a separate decision for an acoustician.
• Ask for reaction to fire to the class your authority requires, and slip resistance, for the batch supplied.
• Decide whether the floor carries a design: prayer rows, an aisle runner, a border or a motif.
• Specify a cleaning routine the volunteers or contractor can actually keep.
• Order spare tiles from the same batch.
• Check the subfloor: level, dry and sound. The floor is bonded with adhesive and needs no underlay; see the installation page.

Buying for a church or mosque

Our minimum is 500 m² per colour, because each colour is its own production run; custom colours and custom prints need the full 500 m². Many halls are smaller than that: tell us the area and we check which in-stock designs are available below the minimum. Samples are free and the buyer pays the courier: send your courier account number, or we quote the freight before shipping. Stock designs typically take a few weeks to produce, custom prints around 4 to 8 weeks. Most building committees buy through a local contractor, and our page for contractors covers how they order.

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