Even with the current trend to replace carpets with wood-look synthetic flooring, carpets still have a place in homes and offices. Understanding the benefits of carpets and maintenance of it may be useful when making your final decision as carpets work better in certain spaces than others and may be more suitable for certain lifestyles and stages. The table below is a basic comparison between carpets and wood-look synthetic flooring.
While there’s no denying that options such as hardwood, polished concrete or tiles are ideal for some projects, hard flooring options in general lack the variety of styles, designs, textures and construction types available with carpets. Correctly specified, installed and maintained, a good quality carpet will keep its appearance for many years to come.
What’s less well known, however, is that carpet also adds several significant benefits to the indoor climate, plus important safety aspects, acoustic benefits and increased energy efficiency.
Please be aware that carpets are manufactured from different dye lots. They are measured on what’s called the Grey Scale and can differ by 5% on either side allowing for a maximum difference of 10% from sample to sample. Also remember that all carpets have a pile direction so can look lighter/darker from one side to the other.
Carpet Styles
Cut Pile VS Loop Pile Carpet
Different carpet fibres have unique characteristics which determine the price and performance of a carpet. Carpet should be chosen according to the best style and texture for an installation. For example, tight low loop carpet will offer minimal pile distortion and look better in high traffic areas than a chunky large loop. Remember that any, luxurious piled carpet is probably not the best performer in high traffic areas as cut pile carpets all tend to flatten to a certain extent.
Cut pile and loop carpets are the two major styles; every carpet is either a cut pile or a loop pile. So what about the carpets with fancy style names like frieze, Berber, or plush? These are all subcategories of cut or loop carpets. The names just give more insights into how they’re constructed. At the end of the day, carpet styles are just names for how a carpet is constructed. Every carpet is cut or looped, but some carpets have other unique construction characteristics, such as twists or fibre height, that give them a special name. With this general concept in mind, let’s learn a little more about cut pile and loop carpets, since you’re likely to encounter them during your carpet shopping experience.
Loop Pile Carpet
If you leave the carpet in its woven form, it is a loop carpet. All that this means is that the carpet consists of a bunch of loops of fiber. There can be many variations of loop carpet. Subclasses of loop carpet are level loop carpet, textured loop, multilevel loop, and special loop styles such as Berber. Berber carpet is a popular enough name to deserve its own page, but the rest of the loop carpets can be described here
Loop Pile
If you leave the carpet in its woven form, it is a loop carpet. All that this means is that the carpet consists of a bunch of loops of fiber. There can be many variations of loop carpet. Subclasses of loop carpet are level loop carpet, textured loop, multilevel loop, and special loop styles such as Berber. Berber carpet is a popular enough name to deserve its own page, but the rest of the loop carpets can be described here
Level Pile
All of the loops are the same height in this carpet. It’s nothing fancy, but if you like a clean orderly look, you may enjoy a level loop carpet. The loops can be big or small, but smaller loops tend to be more durable. Typically, standard level loop carpets are found more in commercial settings.
Textured Loop Carpet
Textured loops have subtle height variations giving the carpet a patterned appearance. The different sized loops reflect light differently. This makes noticeable patterns in the carpet, which can be a nice touch to make any room look a little more interesting.
Multi-level Loop Carpet
For practical purposes, this is the same as textured loop. Multi-level loop carpets have more noticeable patterns due to greater difference in loop sizes. Expect the same patterned loop carpet appearance, just a little more noticeable with multi-level loop.
Cut Pile Carpet
Cut pile is the most desired type of construction and is suitable for most areas of the home.
Velvet
Dense construction and low pile height, with fibres tightly twisted and close together to create a rich, smooth velvet surface.
Saxony
A variety of level cut pile styles with distinct upright tufts. These may vary in appearance from loose to dense constructions in a range of pile heights.
Frieze or hard twist
A cut pile where the yarns are twisted and heat-set in position, which helps hide footprints and vacuum marks.
Shag carpeting
Longer pile with a shaggy appearance.
Cut loop
This has a sculptured appearance, created by cutting some loops and leaving others uncut.
Texture
Carpet surfaces absorb or reflect light in different ways according to their construction and the finishing process applied to their tufts or pile. This can significantly change their appearance.
Design
Carpet design is a combination of colour, pattern and texture. Modern contract carpets offer virtually unlimited options in this respect, from plain, discrete finishes to exciting, vibrant ones which enhance their surroundings.
Even extreme design effects can be achieved without any loss of wear performance and long-term appearance retention.
Fibre Types
From the luxury of wool to the latest sixth-generation nylon yarns, the different types of fibre used to make a carpet have an impact on the performance of your carpet and its suitability to different areas of your home.
NYLON
Nylon fibres provide excellent resilience and abrasion resistance, are exceptionally colourfast and can be dyed into a wide variety of rich colours. Nylon is resistant to staining when treated with a stain-resistant repellent. Today’s greatly improved ‘treated nylon fibres’ enable easy removal of soil and most common household food and beverage stains through professional cleaning.
POLYPROPYLENE
Naturally stain- and fade-resistant, polypropylene BCF is the fastest growing carpet fibre, now representing more than 60% of all fibres used in the South African carpet industry. Because the fibre is naturally moisture-resistant, it is dyed during the extrusion process. Polypropylene is most commonly used in loop pile constructions and offers exceptional value for money.
POLYESTER
Polyester carpets are popular for their bulkiness, softness and colour clarity as well as their excellent stain- and fade-resistant properties. Polyester offers consumers the highest possible combination of performance and value.
ACRYLIC
This is a widely used synthetic fibre in carpeting. Providing the characteristics and feel of a wool carpet, but at a significantly reduced price.
WOOL
About 1% of the carpet market consists of products made with wool fibre. Wool has excellent aesthetic properties, and even though modern synthetic fibres offer superior performance, they have not fully achieved the natural patina of wool. Although wool does not have the resistance to abrasion or moisture absorption that synthetic fibres do, it does clean well and therefore ‘ages gracefully’. Wool carpets are the most expensive.
BLENDS
Different fibres can be mixed to create carpets with various qualities in performance and style. A particularly good blend is 80% wool mixed with 20% nylon. More modern blends combine polypropylene with nylon.
Eco-Friendly Carpet Innovations
The carpet industry has been hard at work developing eco-friendly carpeting, made partially from post-consumer recycled polyester.
These innovative “green” carpets offer all the advantages of regular carpets while making our planet a better place.
Eco-friendly underlays are also available such as:
Manufactured using the finest recycled rubber
Not air-filled, therefore will not “collapse”
Fully recyclable
Unaffected by moisture
Provides thermal insulation
Retains appearance, even in high traffic / heavy duty areas
Anti-allergenic
Easy and lightweight to transport and fit
