This is a little bit different type of blog here. We design home gyms for our clients daily, so this is our life. We go into people's homes or they come into our showroom and if we haven't been part of the process with the builder from the beginning, we pick up from wherever the client is in the process.
So this blog is aimed a little bit more for our builder and design partners, though it's instructive for anybody designing a gym space.
And I'm going to tell you right now that if you go with low-end, old style black, hard, rubber flooring when you're putting a gym in a client's house, they're not going to be happy when they find out. And once they go to buy fitness equipment to place in their gym, they are likely going to find out.
I've literally had three clients in the past 2 weeks that were referred to me that were extremely unhappy with the quality of the floor in their gym once they understood what the options were. One was referred in by an architect up in Maine, one was a house on Love Lane in Weston, and the other was a house in Newton.
I understand building spec houses, as well as the design build process. We work with literally hundreds of builders.
So I'll just put it right out here. When you go with old style, hard, 8 mm black rubber, the client is going to find out eventually that they have the cheapest, worst-on-their-joints, flooring that could have been purchased.
I suppose it's better than having them crawl around on concrete, but on a floor that they're going to do mobility exercises, jump up and down on, and work their joints harder than any other room in the house, the flooring is literally more important in their gym than any other room.
When we're designing a exercise space today, We have a lot more options than we used to have. Some of them still require a trade-off between appearance and function, but even the least cushioned stacked flooring today has twice the amount of vibration absorption as the old hard rubber flooring. Stacked floorings like Rally or Monster can be three to four times as energy absorbent as old hard rubber.
This is a stacked floor in Osterville. Easier on the joints, and much more attractive.
To round out the examples mentioned above, all three of the clients were immensely disappointed when they found out that their gym flooring was an inexpensive substitute for what is really used today. The one from Maine literally told us that they had made the choices but "they had been poorly advised". And understand that all three clients are ripping up their old flooring and putting in flooring that's easier on their joints and more suited to the exercises they're doing. And none of them are happy having to do that.
Let us know if we can help you or your clients design a personalized gym that they're thrilled with. Gym Design, outfitting, and servicing is our little niche.
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