Carpet Buying Tips
1 - Know your carpet dealer. Carpeting is an expensive investment and you want a dealer that is well informed with fibers, colors, styles, padding, and installation techniques. To find a trusted dealer, call our office for a referral, ask your friends or family to see if they are happy with the entire carpet buying experience, not just the price.
2 - Lifestyle - consider the number of family members, pets, and use of rooms.
3 - Personal Preferences - Define your preferences: Color schemes, expectations, patterns, how often you clean the carpet, desired style of carpet.
Pile Height and Density
Frieze - Short, tight twist carpet. This is a long wearing carpet.
Textured Plush - A frieze with longer pile and less dense. Excellent for wear, and elegant looking.
Textured Saxony - This is a textured plush but with less yarn. Performs well, but will show noticeable crushing in high traffic areas.
Finishing
Velvet - Sheared, dense, and not crimped. This style shows the most footprints, vacuum marks and is the most difficult to seam well. Usually in a solid color, but may not hide dirt well.
Plush - Similar to velvet but less dense, more coarse look, and not as tightly twisted. Shows footprints and may show seams.
Looped Carpet - Looped carpet often look good longer than a plush, often used in commercial applications. Choose a dense loop for long life.
Berber - Carpet that is looped with flecks of color, may vary in size. Not all Berber carpets wear well because of fiber content.
Color
Use common sense - light color will show more dirt, and darker colors require more frequent vacuuming to keep particles from being noticed.
Be careful about using trendy colors - you may find you soon tire of the color.
Fiber Types
Nylon - Strong fiber, great for high traffic areas when used in a high density carpet. When treated with stain resistance it will perform well for 5 years.
Polyester - Strong fiber compares with nylon in strength, made from recycled pop bottles. Loosely woven carpets may mat and crush.
Olefin - Best suited for indoor/outdoor use. Performs well if the pile height is low. This fiber will crush.
Wool - Expensive carpet, long lasting luxury carpet. Makes an excellent Berber, plush, and frieze.
Types of Padding
Waffle - Contains a large amount of air, allowing it to crush under pressure. Not suitable for high traffic areas.
Slab Rubber - Resists crushing and suitable for high traffic areas.
Foam Padding - Made from urethane foam and available in many thicknesses and densities, not good for high traffic.
Rebond - Made from scraps of high density foam, available in many thicknessess, good for high traffic areas.
Frothed Foam - Made from super dense urethane. Very durable.
Fiber - Used under area rugs and some Berber.
Berber Pad - Special pad for use under some types of Berber.