Buying a carpet shouldn’t be hard! Here’s what you need to know when buying a carpet for your home. Beyond knowing the sizes of your rooms, you need to think about the style, color, and texture.
Types of Carpet
Carpets come in three categories: cut pile, loop pile, and cut and pile. Within these categories are the types of carpets that you know. Understanding your floor covering is an important part of the buying decision.
Cut pile carpet
Cut Pile is produced by evenly cutting the loops created by the product's weave. This allows the carpet to be dense, soft, and slightly tufted. There are several types of cut pile carpet: plush, textured, frieze, and cable.
Plush - Plush carpet flooring is the most common of all carpets. It comes in almost every color and is known for its conformity. Many say that plush carpet has the look of a freshly cut lawn because of the way it retains vacuum lines and footprints. It is important to note that while plush carpet gives a pristine look, it can wear quickly in heavy traffic areas.
Textured - Textured carpet is one of the more modern and sturdy floorings covers available. While still a cut pile carpet, the fibers have been twisted and sewn to create a different look, called the permanent curl. This curl reduces the amount of light reflection, masking footprints. Textured carpet is better than plush and some of your other options.
Frieze - This type of floor covering is durable yet a distinguished and beautiful finished product. Frieze also hides footprints and vacuum lines because of the tighter twist of the yarn.
Cable - Cable carpet is created with long bulky strands rather than the standard strands that the other cut pile carpets. With great extravagance and luxury comes great responsibility! Cable carpet, like plush, tends to break down under heavy traffic.
Loop style carpets
This style of carpet is uncut and is close to the floor. Loop Pile carpets are resistant to wear and tear, which is why most commercial carpet is made this way. You can choose loop pile carpets from a few styles: commercial and Berber.
Commercial - Commercial carpets are normally made from olefin and/or nylon and can be multi-colored to hide traffic patterns and dirt. It can also be textured by using higher or lower loops.
Berber - Berber carpet is the most durable of home carpets. These carpets are normally multi-colored to hide dirt, which means Berber is especially great for homes with children!
Cut and loop carpeting
Cut and loop carpet combines the two previous styles of carpet. These floor coverings, also called sculpted carpets, are good at hiding heavy foot traffic and dirt. The cut/uncut design produces a unique set of patterns to make any room look customized to your liking.
