I've listed your options for your games room flooring in order of my favorite to least liked surface. Your mileage may vary of course.
Custom Sports Flooring
Custom sports flooring such as Gerflor Taraflex are especially designed with sports such as table tennis in mind, with features such as extra cushioning, reduced bending of the floor around the point of impact, better shock absorption, and optimum grip for table tennis.If you have a dedicated table tennis room and have the cash to afford it, you can't beat this type of floor. Your feet and joints will definitely thank you for it!
Wooden Floors
My second choice for a home table tennis room would be sprung wooden flooring. By this I mean floorboards that are not laid directly on the concrete slab, but instead are raised off the ground slightly. My local table tennis center uses this method, and the slight "give" of the raised floorboards is much easier on your legs than unsprung wooden floors.Ordinary hard wooden floors or parquetry can be OK to play on as well, but you'll feel the lack of shock absorption after a hour or two.
In both cases (and for any table tennis flooring really), it's important to get the finish used on the flooring just right. Make it too slippery and you'll be sliding all over the place, and risking an injury whenever you try to move. But floors that are too grippy aren't ideal either. What you are looking for is a floor with good grip but just a little bit of slip available for when you are going from flat out to a sudden halt. A little bit of slide is also important for when you don't have time to lift your feet fully - you want to be able to drag your feet into position without them unexpectedly sticking on the floor. Watch out for the amount of gloss on the floor too - otherwise you might get reflections from your lighting.
Linoleum / Vinyl
My next choice for a home court would be a linoleum or vinyl floor with the right amount of grip. If it comes with a nice thick, soft underlay then even better.Carpet
A less than ideal choice is carpet flooring. For a table tennis room industrial carpet tiling can be acceptable, and it is hard wearing. You can also get by with shorter pile carpets, but be aware that playing on carpet is generally more tiring, since you have to lift your feet clear of the floor when playing in shoes - there's generally very little slip available on carpet (although some very short industrial carpet tiles do slide a bit). If you play in your table tennis shoes, you'll also find that you'll be wearing out pile carpets pretty fast too!In my own table tennis room, I actually use two layers of carpeting - the installed short pile carpet and a large piece of recycled short pile carpet placed on top. The top layer protects the more expensive pile carpet underneath, and the two combined carpets actually give quite good cushioning, which is a bonus. The downsides are that I have to be careful not to trip over the edges of the loose carpet when walking into the room (I've done that a few times!), and the fact that it doesn't look all that appealing since the dark green top carpet doesn't match the rest of the room!
Concrete / Brick or Ceramic / Slate Tiles
If you are playing in your garage or back patio, you may end up playing on concrete or bricks, while it's also possible that you might have a family games room with tiling. Whether this is acceptable really depends on the natural roughness and finish applied - they can range from very slippery to very grippy. You can always recoat with paint or clear finish to adjust things. On the plus side, you won't wear out the floor. On the downside, you might wear out your joints! So make sure you are wearing shoes with very good shock absorption - you'll need it.On a side note, some players claim that table tennis tables on hard surfaces such as concrete or hard wooden floors play faster than tables on soft flooring like carpet. I can't say I've ever noticed this myself - but you may differ. It's not likely to be a critical issue though.
