I went through the decision you're making now about a year ago, and ended up deciding against it. My reason was that the samples they sent just didn't feel like there was any cushion at all for walking, sitting on it, whatever. I didn't have a carpet pad, but even so. I only had a space of 4 tiles, so it wasn't really a good sample to try...But we wanted something more comfy to be on. For you, for kids, it might be a whole different story. I know the dilemma you're facing on this choice! I went around for months before I decided. Good luck! (I do think they would wear very well.)

For a home gym I would suggest considering glue-down carpet tiles rather than Flor which is only stuck down by a Post-It-like adhesive "dot", just for safety's sake. It does not necessarily look "industrial", depending on the particular carpet you choose, but it will be more durable than a residential product. It will also almost certainly be much cheaper than the Flor tiles. Steve_O over on the Flooring forum did his whole house (IIRC) with commercial carpet tile and says it looks fantastic and was pretty easy to install. Bounce over there and search for "carpet tile"; Steve's email link is enabled so you could email him with any further questions about his carpet. Although we ended up going with the Milliken Tesserae in the previous house for extra "cush" since DH likes to roll around on the floor with the dog :-), I got a whole slew of free samples from a site called CarpetBargains. The pricing was very good and they answered my questions quickly and politely. There are lots of other sources, Google "carpet tiles" and "carpet squares" (different companies call them different things). Someone over on the Flooring forum was happy with iCarpetiles too. Avoid places that sell seconds, look for overruns, discontinued items, and closeouts. If you're not worried about being able to take up a stained or damaged part, look at commercial level-loop carpeting - if your gym isn't large, local carpet stores will likely have remnants at a bargain price. (Heck, if we had the scratch to put something else down I'd invite you to NH and GIVE you the several hundred square feet that infests the upstairs of our house in exchange for the help ripping it out! It's just not appropriate for bedrooms, IMO - PO was a cheap bastiche.)

We ran into that in our master bathroom since we have a door to outside in it and that is the entry to the dogs yard. Mud Central. DH bought a run that will fit the largest space at a very discount store and we figure to toss it when mud season is over if I can not clean it up. The thing that helped is that carpet it very close to the color of the floor so it blends in nicely. so far the mud spots have vacuumed up nicely after they dry. Then again it is winter and in snow country there are just those kind of things we all have to deal with. May I please ask about the blind on your long glass door? Is it attached at the bottom and where did you get it? I need something like this in the worst way!!! Thank you Chris

There's a 4th option! I realized that we do not necessarily have to get a pattern with blue in it. I played around with Flor's design app and found some patterns with other colors that look nice with the blue (below). I also did some color block designs with blue as a border (shown below with two of our blue options). I think we will be doing one of these two (color blocks or non-blue patterns). We really do want to do the sale. The cost is more than my husband expected, so getting it on sale is worth it. In general I like taking my time to do something "properly" (which is why I have spent over a year now on kitchen planning), but for the basement we are not too bothered. Right now we have damaged (too dark) blue carpet over 2/3 of the room, and bare concrete where I tore out the worst of the damaged carpet. We are having company in June and just don't have the time or inclination to pore over pictures, get more samples, and agonize over colors, while we are doing our kitchen planning, and also some landscaping.