Liberty Mutual, Dover West Cafe
Dover, NH

Project Strategy

Directly after we worked with Liberty Mutual to update all of their office, lobby and corridor carpet at the Dover West campus, they requested assistance to refresh their cafeteria. The challenge was we needed to do it quickly and have it work with the existing floor and wall tile of the attached kitchen server area.  In addition, they wanted to tie in the flooring from the spaces we had just completed as well as customize the carpet tile by using their company branding colors.

The Cafeteria was used not only for employee dining, but it was also used for company gatherings and as a large meeting space. It was very important that the space be well designed and special.

With some research, we were able to find Liberty’s Pantone colors to create some custom color mock-ups of one of the running-line products from Milliken. Liberty was so happy with the previous installation we decided as a team to use Milliken and their Edge Lit pattern again which we had just installed in all of their lobby spaces. To make it even more unique, they chose to go with the large format 1x1 meter square tiles versus the 25cm x 1 meter planks used everywhere else. The only other space to use the 1x1 meter carpet tile was the small entrance lobby which was also on the first floor. It worked out perfectly that the first floor which had differently used spaces had this version of Edge Lit versus the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors.

To create the custom-colored Edge Lit sample using the Liberty Mutual Pantone colors, we used Milliken Vision Lab, in-house custom design services team. They created digital mock-ups which we narrowed down and had full-sized high-resolution full 1x1 meter tile-sized digital prints shipped to each of our homes during Covid to review together via Zoom. The quality of the digital print was so precise that Liberty approved it for ordering. We chose a deep charcoal grey tile as an accent border to mimic the existing porcelain tile in the kitchen and a slate grey Roppe wall base. The “Liberty Teal” accent color used throughout the pattern shines through in the space and makes it very unique to their brand.  The bright color mingles with the bright sunshine when it streams through on a nice day and reflects the luminous blue of the sky outside. There are quite a few indoor plants near the wall of windows which brings the outdoors in like they achieved in their other carpet designs on the upper floors. The cafeteria space at Liberty Mutual Dover West is the final piece to the puzzle that completes the building and ties the design together.