Used carpet tiles in my room. Cost about $1.19/sq ft. Easy to put in, durable and ordered some extras so I can replace some of they get stained or damaged.
Some of these are pretty wild: https://www.astrocarpetmills.com/ They have more "upscale" patterns but I've seriously considered some of the space themed ones, but it wouldn't match the table at all.
EDIT: I forgot to add, most carpet stores carry commercial lines. My parents used them in their house, looked new for like 2 decades then they moved. You could literally clean it with bleach and it was color fast. The fibers themselves were some kind of poly with the color built in. It sounds hideous, but it just looked like a nice blue low pile carpet and it was surprisingly comfortable.
How high are your lights from the playing surface?I did mine in 2 phases and 2 ends of the cost spectrum.
To just get a table in the basement I looked at whatever carpet Home Depot had in an 18 ft wide roll and bought 30 feet of it and the same amount of their cheapest pad.
Once I was ready to spend real money I used engineered wood but got a thick and wide variety that had a bit of a built in moisture protection layer on the bottom. I glued it right to the bare concrete but used a very specific mastic adhesive that is adhesive/moisture barrier/leveling compound in one. I put it down with a notched trowel like you would lay tile. Keep in mind I had 10 years of mot having any moisture plus did several tests where you tape plastic down in one square foot areas to check moisture.
I did wood only after knowing it was dry. Kitchen, bar, bathroom and walk out areas are ceranic tile but about 1200 square ft is the wood.
I just don't care for carpet in general but if I did I'd use a fairly dark commercial carpet.
The table light never really moved.![]()
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Sent from the future.
How high are your lights from the playing surface?
I purchased (5) black 1/2'' 16x20 rubber flooring rolls. Unrolled em over my concrete floor. Taped the seams to keep dirt out.
This is the route I wanted to go in my garage, but the concrete finish was too rough. It'd need a TON of grinding to fix, so I didn't bother.
Should be a very comfortable surface for playing on.