Mannington Commercial has named six finalists in the third year of the company's tx:style design challenge.

“Once again, the design community has responded to our tx:style design challenge with overwhelming excitement,” said Natalie Jones, vp commercial brand development and creative product. “This year, we set a record for number of designs submitted, with more than 500 amazing entries from all over the world. And we could not be happier with the finalists – the creativity and fresh perspective they bring is inspiring to us.”

After rigorous review by a panel of judges, the six finalists were selected based on votes and comments by registered users, aesthetics, creativity, and feasibility of translating the designs into commercial flooring product.

The finalist designs are “Manhattan” by Ryan Cook; “Oxidize” by Suzanne Froedge; “Between” by Ashlie Fuller; “Coastal Rocks” by Paul Lewandowski; “A La Mode” by Sara Meier; and “Crosswalk” by Sergio Mondragon.

Each finalist wins $3,000, will join Mannington's design development group for a two-day creative session this month, and will attend NeoCon 2011 where the final voting for the grand prize winners will take place. The two grand prize winners will be chosen by open voting online and at NeoCon, to win $6,000 in total prize money, a full product collection and a trip to Maison & Objet in Paris.

At the close of the entries phase, this year’s contest had 18,000 registered visitors, who spend an average of more than four and a half minutes on the site. Twenty-two percent of these visitors came to the site from Facebook.

“Our first tx:style winner, the Tx:Style Collection 2009, is performing beautifully in the healthcare market, and last year’s winners – one carpet collection and one hard surface collection – will debut at NeoCon. We’re thrilled to see where this latest round of innovative, creative and beautiful products will go as the designers develop their concepts into fully realized flooring products,” Jones noted.