CARPET GUIDE OVERVIEW

Carpeting offers warmth, softness and is much quieter than any other floor coverings. Today's carpet styles and colors blend well with any room decor. There are carpets for all areas of the home including active areas where fashion and function are both important in your selections.

Carpet manufacturers offers today's consumers a wider selection of patterns, textures and colors than ever before. Advancements in fiber technology and carpet construction are making carpets softer, more stain-resistant and allow carpets to retain their like-new appearance far better than ever before. Berber carpets, patterned carpets and textured cut pile saxonies are among the most popular choices with homeowners today.

Listed below are some of the advantages to using carpet in your home:

• Carpet adds warmth and is soft under feet.
• Carpet is much quieter than hard surfaces floors.
• Carpet comes in a wide variety of color tones and hues.
• Carpet is easy to decorate with and offers many solid color tones for rooms with patterned wall coverings.
• Carpet can hide many subfloor 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 the installation costs are much less than some of the hard surface products.

Today's carpet manufacturers are combining softer fibers, better stain resistance with backings that block odors, spills and many more innovations for the modern lifestyle! These types of features are built into the better-quality carpets offered by the leading carpet manufacturers.

Most carpet today is tufted, rather than woven. The tufting process is similar to using a large sewing machine that is about 13 feet wide with 100 of needles that sew the yarn into a synthetic backing. The majority of carpets sold today are made from nylon fibers twisted into yarns and then tufted into carpet.

Carpet is basically constructed in two type of piles: loop pile or cut pile. Patterned carpet  is a combination of both loop and cut yarns or variations of loops set to different pile heights.

How long a carpet will retain it's like new texture and appearance is based on the type of fiber, how tight the yarns are twisted and heatset, and the pile density. (Obviously, not cleaning your carpets regularly, or improper cleaning methods will effect the appearance as well.)  Also, how close tufts are to one another will effect the durability of the carpet.