• Country Floors

  15 E. 16th St., 212-627-8300

  Wandering through the displays at Country Floors feels a bit like arts-and-crafts time at summer camp. The store’s scrappy, roll-up-your-sleeves environment caters to DIY types, who are encouraged to play with the samples. The staffers are friendly yet technically savvy; they won’t sell you something that’s beautiful and expensive but impractical. Specializing in gorgeous Dutch and Portuguese tiles, Country Floors also carries trendier styles like glass, terra-cotta, and mosaic tiles with inlaid wood. Although the store doesn’t offer installation, the staff works closely with contractors for projects as minor as a backsplash or as grand as the Met’s spectacular new floor in the Pompeii Gallery. Prices run from $4 a square foot for basic subway tiles to more than $1,000 a square foot for hand-painted Dutch tiles in the Moorish tradition.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine