Our old floor intake vent was pretty worn out (also made of wood), and the slats in it were wide enough that our Roomba often got its wheels stuck in them. I decided to build a replacement and thought “I might as well make it stylish!”. The design started as a grid of squares, like a traditional vent pattern, to which I applied the Swirl filter in Inkscape. The motivation was that since it’s an intake vent sucking in the air, why not make it look like a vortex.
Yeah, the opening in the hardwood floor for the vent is pretty deep (I think 1 1/4 "), so I had plenty of space to put a support structure under these tiles and still have them be flush with the floor.