Best flooring for home office?

A few years ago we decided to use our 4th bedroom as a home office, as we were each working from home one day/week.  We have no kids, one good cat, and plenty of space.  We did everything but the flooring, as with our limited use it was OK to leave the normal cut pile carpeting with a chair mat over it. 

Fast forward to today and like many, we both work at home full time and share the office, and likely will for the forseeable future.  Happily, we haven't killed each other and things are fine.  The only thing about the office we don't like is the carpeted floor makes it difficult to move on our wheeled office chairs.  We both like the chairs we have, but want to be able to roll around on the floor a little and not destroy whatever flooring we put down. Our subframe is typical late 80's suburban stuff on a second floor: plywood subfloor over joists.  

So, what flooring have you used for this sort of situation and how do you like it?  We want something that works with our wear pattern of the chairs, looks nice and fits in our semi-custom, getting more modern by the project, decent suburban house.  The area is small enough that cost is not really a concern to a point, as the cost difference between flooring that is $4/sq isn't that much in the end for flooring that is $20/sq. 

A low berber carpet would still not let us roll around and would get stuck and crushed, if my work office's carpeting is any indication.   We could go hardwood, our entire first floor is tounge and groove nailed down strand woven bamboo, it could match, but there is no other hardwood upstairs (carpet in bedrooms and hall, tile in bathrooms).  If hardwood, which woods to pick and which to avoid?  Hardness seems important here.    Tile seems like it wouldn't work as the wheels will get stuck in the grout joints.  How about LVP? Does it really look OK or can you still always tell that it is just a fake of whatever it is trying to look like?  How's the subfloor prep?  Laminate is right out, why bother, not worth the effort.  Any other ideas or experience to share? 

We had Berber carpet and a plastic protector and hated it.  We put in hardwood then the wife had a small throw rug put down. It's nice.  
 

We put the laminate in our laundry room and love it.  Got it at Costco cheap and figured if it sucks the big one we are out $120.   We've had some water leak and had no problems.  

In reply to Sonic :

Your answer from the many offered will define more who you are than what is actually best. 
Forget carpet if you want to roll around easily. However carpet will be warmer underfoot than any other offerings. 
 The solution depends on your priority's.  Low  cost? Quick and easy? DIY friendly?  Source of pride? Display your creative side? Bright appearing? Warm appearing?  Durable? Contractor friendly?  
 

please explain your priorities 

This summer, the 7 year old carpet came out... 

...and vinyl plank went in. No surface prep needed to the plywood. Our product came with a slight backing material pre installed. 

It okay. And, I mean just okay. But, it was a cost effective solution that meets our needs for kid and dog wear in our house where these two rooms (living and dining) are the center of all activity. 

A floating engineered wood is probably your happy place. Doesn't have to match downstairs wood.

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

I've made my own hardwood flooring and bought hardwood flooring. A friend with more ambition collected discarded hardwood pallets and turned that into flooring ( GMA pallets are required to be hardwoods like oak or ash )   But hardwood might not be your only answer. Stone or marble Can be easily affordable and go down over in floor radiant heat. The marble cost me only 7 cents per tile (1 sq ft ) when I bought a damaged pallet of it at HomeDepot  I was able to use almost 70% of the tiles  and it quickly installed .  
The Stone on the other hand was close to $20 per tile and required $33 dollar a foot  edging tile.  

Having just laid ~850sqft of engineered hardwood (acacia), I can say that it's time-consuming but the results are worth the effort. We did floating, glued installation. Looks really nice, comfortable and quiet with the pad under it, and with a thin mat works well with the rolling office chair.

If you pull the carpet and replace with something smooth for your home office, I recommend that you have some planned counter measure for echo-reduction if your office activities have you on the phone a lot.  With that in mind, maybe some real commercial grade, ultra low pile, office carpet

I have oak hardwood in my downstairs bedroom/home office.  You don't get away from using a chair mat entirely (want to avoid scratching the floor), but it does roll well.

(I hired contractors for this, it's beyond my DIY skill set)

I have oak hardwood in my office (along with the rest of my house) I installed ~8 years ago, and no wear marks from the chair so far.  Other areas of the house are not holding up quite as well.  Still it looks like in the office it would go a solid 20+ years before needing any repair.

I had a friend get some sanded and refinished and I was blown away by how inexpensive it was.  If I were doing it again, I'd go with wider planks and have it finished after install instead of using the pre-finished stuff.

I paid a guy to put down 3 bedrooms, 2 hallways, office, bathroom, living room, dining room and a refinish of the kitchen.

We love it and the effort was unbelievable from my end as I saved money by ripping out the carpet and 90,000 staples the carpet guys put in.   
 

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Most professional floor finishes are a version of plastic and do scratch.  The terrible thing is  once scratched you need to sand them completely off and start over. There are only so many times you can do that before you sand down to near the tongue and groove thus forcing you to replace the flooring. 
     I used old fashioned Shellac. For two reasons.  It's harder to scratch and when scratched or otherwise damaged. It's repaired insanely easily. 
wipe some denatured alcohol over the scratched area and apply another coat. New melts right into old. And becomes invisible.    
 Here's the really great thing I'm the worst sloppiest painter on this planet. I have a big wide barn brush I slop shellac on like a drunken sailor.  Yet it comes out beautiful. No runs and no brush cleaning. Just leave it dry up in the can  and a year or a decade later pour some fresh shellac and alcohol on the brush and it's like new. 
Got some on you? In your hair(?) just take a long soaking bath and it's gone. On your clothes? Toss 'em in the laundry with the rest of your clothes. 
Oh by the way, Shellac is used on fine violins and antique furniture. And you eat some every time you take a pill.  Yes it's edible. Don't drink it because in order to avoid the liquor tax it's denatured.  2% of some poison has to be added. 
 

Can you let some air out of your tires?

(kidding but I do wonder if buying different casters would be a viable solution).

Best? Industrial low-low-low pile carpet. There is a reason that every office building has it. 

In any case, I had a very similar problem. My office has some berber-like carpet, and you can't use your roller on it. I went to get a plastic chair pad, and was shocked to see the prices - like $100. So I DIY'd it, and paid a whopping $6 at Home Depot for a 4x8 sheet of hardboard. I had them cut it in half, and stuck the square down in front of my desk. Problem solved. 

Is it perfect? Well, functionally it is pretty damn close. It would be functionally perfect had I cut it to fit around my desk legs, but that is a minor gripe. It looks decent, though not spectacular. If I really wanted to overthink this, I would put a border on it so the chair never rolled off, but for now (and likely for 20+ years) I'm happy with my hardboard. So far the 1/2 of the sheet has lasted me 2 years and doesn't show any wear or tear beyond where I spilled coffee - that I never even tried to clean other than wiping it up. The other 1/2 of the sheet is sitting in the garage. 

Oh, here are some other ideas: 

Obviously these, and especially mine, are not renovation style or new flooring. But if you otherwise like your carpet, or don't mind it, this may be something to think about.

I saw some replacement chair casters at Menards last night that were heavy duty rubber to keep an office chair from scratching up hardwood, so that might be an option.

For the noise, my brother bought some plywood, some fabric, and some insulation.  He cut up the plywood to make frames to hold the insulation and then covered it with the fabric and hung them on his walls.  They look pretty nice, provide great acoustics, and we're pretty cheap.

The chair damage and the sound are the two biggest problems I see with a hard floor in an office space.  Another hard floor option is the wood-look porcelain and ceramic tiles.  We're looking at that for our first floor because kids and dogs.  For a couple hundred bucks, you can put a warming system under any of the hard floor options as well.

We used carpet tiles in our office very similar to the high traffic ones we spec as part of our work (mostly exhibits for large museums), and they have held up well with our chairs. You could get extra to replace the ones under the chairs for whenever you sell.

Lots of good thoughts and experiences, thank you. 

This doesn't need to be a showpiece as only my wife and I see it, but as we spend so much time in there I want it to be a nice space to be with proper solutions. 

Good call on the replacement castors, I think no matter what we do I will go with some better castors.

As for sound, we are rarely on the phone at the same time and have nobody else in the house to bother other than the cat, so noise isn't really an issue.  

Right now I think I'm leaning toward an engineered hardwood with a maple surface, should be quite hard, have a light feel to brighten the room, and with good castors hold up well.  

I just put down 300 sf of Maple hardwood.  Mine was relatively cheap since I cut down the maples and took them to the mill, but any hardwood would do well.

If you get it pre-finished, it comes with an aluminum oxide finish that is by far the hardest crap you can do and will withstand nearly anything.  If you get unfinished, I strongly suggest Zar OMU finish.  It is a true, alkyd poly emulsified in a water base, so you get the higher strength of the oil esters with the fast drying, easy cleanup, and low odor (in fact, none) of a water based.  It refuses to scratch.  Dropping a couch on it I was able to dent the wood in a scratch-like line, but the plastic nature of the poly meant it didn't scratch or crack.  It just stayed stuck to the wood. I just took a scotchbrite pad to it and a foam brush and "filled" it.  Totally invisible.  The other nice thing about the OMU is that it shoots the middle between Oil and Water in final appearance.  Water poly is strictly a clear finish.  It doesn't highlight or soak into the grain and add contrast like oil.  Oil gives you the contrast, but also ambers and darkens.  OMU gives the contrast oil without the darkening of oil.  You can stain it if you wish, knowing that the OMU won't futher darken it.  Frenchyd and I have sparred about Shellac many times before, and he certainly loves it.  I do not.  No matter what you do, it is yellow or orange.  He has done some beautiful projects with it, and I have as well.  It has it's place, but floors is not one of them in my opinion.  Shellac dries super hard.  Scratching it is like scratching the coating on a candy apple, or crunching the corner of a pane of glass.  Easy to repair, but super obvious until you do.  I like the plastic nature of poly for floors since it is super compliant and very forgiving.

If I were doing it, I would either do a floating vinyl plank or an installed (nailed) hardwood.  Once I finished my hardwood, I just got some of these for my office chair.  They are poly rollerblade wheels with casters that fit in office chair legs.  I got them on Prime Day and I think they were $18, but back to $30 now.  Several options exist for $20-30.

Curtis, is that shaft diameter/interface pretty standard for office chairs?  If so I will pull the trigger on some of those right now.

In reply to ProDarwin :

Yes, very standard.  At the theater I have a stock of about 20 office chairs from the last 100 years, and a bucket full of office chair casters.  When I pick one for a show, I can mix n match casters from the bucket with very few exceptions.

The one caveat seems to be Ikea chairs.  Their shaft size is a slightly smaller diameter and normal casters won't fit an Ikea chair.

Office chair casters seem to be just like other shaft mount casters, but shorter shaft.

Office chair caster:

Normal shaft mount caster like found on a bed frame

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

You are bad for my wallet:

You should see how bad I am for my OWN wallet. :)

The discussion about casters is an important one.  I helped clean out a house a couple of years ago, and the accountant who lived there had worn almost all the way through 3/4 inch oak flooring from fifty years ago.

I'd go with ceramic or stone tiles with tight grout joints, myself, but I'm just not a big fan of dead trees as a fashion statement.

And Shellac is almost as good as a V12 Jag!

Dead trees are renewable, and often a good choice for their material properties. There's a reason we've been using them for floors as long as we have.

/channellingfrenchy