This autumn, I had the chance to visit the 56th Art Biennale in Venice. As a designer and art lover, this is the type of event that blows my mind and feed my inspiration for developing new ideas for carpets.

Every two years, the Art Biennale shows a big variety of artists and researchers from all around the world. The Venice Biennale is one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions showing, for the first time, works specifically created for the six-months–long event. It gives a global and prospective overview of what artists and creators are working on, in term of concepts, ideas, materials, technologies, colours… Pantone regularly shows some of these art works in their Pantone View colour planner books. As a regular user of these Pantone trend books, we noticed, in the latest one -Winter 2017-18- received last week in our burmatex® offices, some pictures of the gorgeous installation from

Products: origin tanzanite, lateral blue monday, tivoli multiline ibiza blue

In the burmatex® design studio we get a lot of requests for design boards and we try to keep the inspirational imagery that we use on them as fresh, individual and creative as we can. Something that we love to include is photography that we have taken in our own time. Last September I went on a city break to Lisbon and became really obsessed with all of the ceramic tiled buildings and trams. I have used these images on our burmatex design boards as well as inspiration for how to put colours together; from our existing carpet tile collections to new developments we are working on.

Products: tivoli marie galante purple, zip indigo run, academy stamford sapphire

Products: cordiale monaco marina, code  emerald city, tivoli guyana moss

Products: tivoli multiline reunion terracotta, strands ten orange, code sun burst, up tomato, tivoli saona sage, tivoli caicos azure

Products: cordiale costa rican sun, up yellow,  lateral gold quest, tivoli montserrat black, strands ten lime, code blue reef

All images: Authors own or  burmatex®

For 2016, Pantone revealed that there would be two colours of the year – rose quartz and serenity. These are subtle and soft pastel shades, not exactly ideal for flooring! A challenge for us in the design team at burmatex® is to react and adapt to predicted colour trends such as these. We anticipate to see these two colours used in a variety of interior finishes over the coming year and are looking to our ranges to see how they can compliment and work with these. Carpet has to be firstly resilient to traffic and dirt so although we might not have the exact colours in our collections, we can put together schemes and ideas that will look modern and relevant alongside these new colours.

Products: tivoli st martins sand, lateral pewter cloud, tivoli nassau skies, tivoli multiline melanesia grey

Products: balance atomic cotton, balance flint, zip steel cable, surface silver vector

Products: origin pyrite,

Here at burmatex®, all of our products are designed and made at our head office in Yorkshire. The design team and manufacturing live side by side on one site, surrounded by a bright patchwork of coloured carpet tiles. The close proximity of the factory and offices has resulted in a close knit community of employees from all disciplines, working together to bring new and creative ideas to the commercial carpet market.

The ideas start in the Design and Marketing team, where concept development and trend research form a large part of the creative process. Taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources, the team aim not only to design new products, but also develop innovative ways of installing the products within interior spaces. Keeping up to date with architecture and interior design trends is key to our success and we aim to inspire with our thoughtful use of pattern and

When choosing your new floor covering, there’s no reason why you have to opt for just one product. At burmatex® all of our carpet ranges can be used together in one design, which gives you the freedom to ‘Mix It Up’. You can add bright pops of colour, interesting stripes and colour zone particular areas to suit your interior layout. You can even add some texture by using products from our structure bonded collection such as lateral, zip and code, which also come in a variety of complimentary colours.

lateral, zip and code

balance echo and balance greyscale

This approach to floor design can also benefit a smaller budget as it allows you to mix more expensive products with more affordable products and still achieve a designer look within your space. For example, if there is a product that you love, but think it is out of your project budget,