
Floor decor can serve a bigger purpose. During Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival in 2015, carpet company Flor handed out some 5,000 squares of carpet so that guests could make their own carpeted seating areas on the grass—creating a functional and eye-catching decor idea. When the weather turned stormy during the festival, attendees used the carpets to cover muddy spots on the grounds.

Sometimes all you need is some masking tape. During Austin's 2014 South by Southwest, event production agency MKG brightened up a dark room using neon masking tape and ultraviolet lighting, creating an edgy, Pop Art-inspired look for the party for online magazine xoJane.com.

The Brussels Flower Carpet is a 19,375-square-foot mosaic of 700,000 intricately arranged begonias that comes to life every two years for five days during August in the central square of the European capital city. Meant to incite conversation about nature, cities, and art, the designs have typically incorporated themes from Belgium’s history since the first carpet was created in 1971. It takes 100 gardeners four hours to arrange the petals by hand.