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Carpet 101: Welcome to Carpet School.

Today's carpet styles, colors and textures blend well with any home decor and with a variety of other flooring products. From traditional to country, from casual to formal, you can always find a carpet that will complement any interior setting and give you years of beauty and performance.

Carpet Construction

Fiber is the basic material that is used to make carpet. Over 90% of all of the carpet made today is made up of synthetic fiber. The rest is natural fiber, most commonly wool.

Synthetic fibers are usually made up of one of three materials: nylon, polypropylene or polyester. All three are created by similar chemical processes using oil and natural gas.

Nylon. Almost 75% of carpet today is made of nylon and, compared to the other synthetic fibers, it performs the best. Nylon is the leader in appearance retention, fade and heat resistance, soil and stain resistance, and color and styling.

Polpropylene. The next most common material used in carpet manufacturing is polypropylene, also referred to as olefin. Introduced in the late 1950’s in Italy, polypropylene BCF has seen fast growth over the last twenty years, and today represents more than thirty-five percent of the total fibers used in the carpet industry.  While polypropylene is not as resilient or resistant to abrasion as nylon, it is naturally stain and fade resistant. Its natural resistance to moisture means that it must be dyed before being extruded, resulting in a more limited range of color options. Polypropylene is most often used in loop pile carpet constructions.

Polyester. The third type of material commonly used in carpet manufacturing is polyester. Polyester was introduced to the carpet industry in the mid 1960’s, and has been well accepted for its bulkiness, color clarity, and good stain and fade resistance. While not as resilient as nylon, Polyester fiber carpet constructed with today’s new technologies can be a good performer.

Wool. The wool used in today’s carpet comes primarily from New Zealand, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. Since wool is a natural fiber, it ranges in color from off-white to black, with many earthen tones between.   Although wool doesn’t stand up to abrasion and moisture as well as synthetics, it cleans well and is known to age gracefully. Wool is the most expensive carpet fiber, and represents less than one percent of the U.S. carpet market.

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Carpet Styles

Your style is personal, unique and natural to you. If you’re looking for a carpet style to match the way you live you’ve come to the right place.

There are six basic styles of carpet: textured, plush (Saxony), frieze, cable, looped (Berber), and cut & loop.

Each style has its own characteristics and performance capabilities. You should carefully consider all of each style’s features, qualities and conditions in making your buying decision.

Textured: an American favorite.	Plush/Saxony: in a word, luxury.	Frieze: the durable one.
This is a very popular cut pile carpet that has alternating twists of yarn creating a two-tone appearance. The textured surface of this carpet does a great job of hiding footprints and vacuum marks. This carpet creates a more casual atmosphere in the room. Textured carpets are great for all areas in the home, are ideal for today’s active families and are available in a broad range of colors and prices.	For a more formal, traditional and elegant look, consider the beautiful Saxony. This style has a smooth, soft, velvet plush look and a luxurious feel. Each yarn has a uniform twist and finish, making this carpet the perfect solution for a master bedroom, dining room or a formal living room. This style is not a good choice for high traffic areas or rooms with active kids. Also be aware that this style does show footprints and vacuum marks.	For an active area, a frieze carpet is a great choice. This is a cut pile style that has a very high twist level, meaning each strand of yarn is twisted so tightly that they actually curl over at the end. This creates a textured surface with a knobby appearance, and a carpet of high durability and very good wear-ability. These carpets are great performers in high-traffic areas and can go anywhere in your home. They also hide footprints and are available in various pile heights that create a variety of different looks.

Cable: cozy underfoot.	Looped/Berber: easy living, long lasting.	Cut & Loop: fun or formal.
Cable style carpet is constructed of thicker, typically longer yarn. This style is very comfortable underfoot and beautiful in a bedroom or living room. This style is better suited for rooms without a lot of activity as it can matte and crush with heavy foot traffic.  It is not recommended for stairs, hallways and other busy areas in your home.	A looped style carpet is often referred to as a Berber. Berbers are really big bulky yarns that are either produced in a level loop or multi-level loop carpet construction. Although many Berbers are made out of olefin fiber, some are made with nylon, or a blend of various carpet fibers. Looped carpets are very durable. This is the result of not cutting the yarn tips. You can see each individual loop. Looped carpets are ideal for casual, active family rooms and come in solid colors, Berber fleck and patterns with varying levels of loops. This carpet hides traffic patterns well but be advised that this style may make seams more apparent and its backing is more visible on stairs.	Cut & Loop is a combination of cut and looped yarns that create pattern effects by the variation in surface textures. Like looped styles, these carpets are low profile and thus perform well, however, sometimes their seams are visible. Cut & loop carpets are very fashionable today, they’re used in casual and traditional rooms and are available in many patterns including fun geometrics and formal botanicals. Their distinctive carved appearance and multiple colors do a good job of hiding stains and standing up to traffic.

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Your Carpet Shopping Guide

Choosing the best carpet is really about finding the right combination of aesthetics, performance and budget to best meet the needs of your lifestyle.  Here are a few items to consider when shopping for the right carpet for your home.

Be aware of seam placement.

Carpet is available in 12’, 15’ and sometimes 13’6” widths. Unless the room to be carpeted is narrower than these widths, the carpet will be seamed. With looped or low-profile patterned carpet you may have visible or peaked seams. The degree of their visibility depends on texture, color, lighting and furniture placement.

Quality = durability.

Higher quality carpet will typically have greater pile density, and tighter twist construction, which will result in better durability. There are six major factors that will impact the durability of carpet:

1. The type of fiber.
2. The ounces of fiber per yard.
3. The density (measured per yard)
4. The Twist Level (measured in number of revolutions an individual yard is spun around itself.
5. Padding (which supports the carpet)
6. Maintenance (Vacuum, Vacuum, Vacuum)

Think Color.

Color has a big impact on any room in the home. Carpet covers a large area of any room, so it’s important to keep some basic rules in mind when selecting your carpeting.

An important consideration about carpet color is that once a carpet is installed in a new home, it will often look lighter than the sample you saw in the store. This is a natural optical effect and you should be aware of this when making a carpet color selection.

Another thing to keep is mind is how the color of carpet affects the mood and feeling of room. Color affects the way we perceive size.

Neutral colors are the best choice if you expect to frequently change the decorating scheme, or if you’re trying to incorporate a lot of existing furniture. Using a neutral colored, good quality carpet is a good idea if the home will be resold any time soon. It’s easier for a prospective buyer to imagine their furniture in a room that is decorated with neutral colors.

Padding increases the life of your carpet.

You’ve probably heard that a good padding will increase the life of a carpet. Well, you’re right! We strongly feel that high quality padding is essential when purchasing carpet.  We recommend an eight pound density rebond padding, we have found it to be the most resilient padding on the market.

If your home is prone to spills from pets or children you might want to consider a padding with a built-in spill guard and antimicrobial protection. These 2nd generation pads have vapor barriers which keep liquids from penetrating the padding (where you can’t clean up the spill) & enzyme treatments which help neutralize odor causing germs.

For more information on care and maintenance for your carpet, click here.

Popular Benefits of Carpet

Homeowners who have been surveyed chose a variety of reasons for selecting carpet over other materials:

• Carpet adds warmth and is soft under feet and easier on children's knees.
• Carpet is much quieter than hard surfaces floors.
• Carpet comes in a wide variety of colors, tones and hues.
• Carpet is easy to decorate with and offers many styles and colors allowing it to be the focus of the room or the perfect foundation for your furniture and accessories.
• Carpet can hide many sub-floor irregularities that would not be permitted with hard surfaces floors.
• Carpet can go over a variety of substrates and on all grade levels, even concrete slabs in basements.
• Carpet is economical and is generally less expensive than hard surface products.

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