Save Your Pennies and Make a Floor of Money

Published on by Lauren Busser

When it comes to flooring, there are your standard materials: carpet, hardwood and tile. In Garfield, Pennsylvania, however a woman decided to use a different building material, pennies.

artisan tattoo gallery
This newly opened artisan tattoo gallery and coffee shop in Garfield, Pennsylvania now has a shiny copper floor made of pennies.

Yes, that’s right, copper pennies. ABC News reported that Mel Angst, who runs a Pittsburgh-area tattoo parlor with her husband was looking for a unique way to tile her parlor, called Artisan Tattoo Shop. She picked up the pennies from a local bank and traded her services as a tattoo artist for manpower.  The task took 300 hours and over three weeks to complete. The results was approximately 800 square feet in Lincoln profiles.

“My floor is made out of about 250,000 pennies,” Angst told ABC Pittsburgh affiliate WTAE. “Amazingly enough, it’s a lot cheaper to glue money to your floor than to actually buy tile. It’s about $3 a square foot.”

After the floor was laid down, Artisan had a gallery show where patrons could view the new floor, and anyone who logged 30 hours or more of penny tiling, would be promised a free penny tattoo.

What”s even more interesting is that this is apparently not the first time someone had the brilliant idea to use pennies to tile a floor. At New York”s Standard Hotel restaurant The Standard Grill the floor is literally tiled in thousands of copper pennies, adding a unique vibe to the interior decor.

Domino magazine
This image, featured in Domino magazine, features cork penny rounds being used in a breakfast nook. They complete the space, calling attention to the chairs while everything else around it is square.

Picking up a quarter million pennies might be as easy as going to your local bank, but if you aren’t  interested in metallic, but like the look of rounded tiles there are a number of places that sell what are known as “penny rounds.” They are tiles, measuring about three quarters of an inch in diameter shaped like tiny circles.  In short, they are about the size of a penny.

Your next question might be, where you should use these tiles.  Tile flooring is common in kitchens and bathrooms, and pennyrounds can be used for either. Like other tiles, penny rounds can also be used for flooring or walls, even as accents over a countertop.

large kitchen with a breakfast nook
This house plan features a large kitchen with a breakfast nook as well as 2.5 bathrooms, all perfect spaces to make use of some penny rounds.

If you are enamored by the concept of rounded tiles then make sure to check out our collection of Fabulous Kitchen House Plans.