Buyer's Guide

Carpet is bought wrong more often than any other floor.

People choose it by how it feels in the showroom. That's the one thing that won't predict how it looks in three years. Here's what actually does.

The one thing to understand first

Carpet doesn't wear out. It uglies out — the fibres untwist, mat down and stop reflecting light the way they did new, and the traffic lane in front of the sofa goes grey and flat while the carpet under the couch stays perfect. Nothing has worn through. It just looks tired, and people replace it.

Everything on this page — fibre, twist, density, and above all the underpad — is really about one question: how long before it uglies out? Softness underfoot in the showroom tells you nothing about that. It often tells you the opposite.

Fibre: the first real decision

Every fibre trades resilience against stain resistance against price. There is no best one — there's a right one for the room.

Fibre Resilience Stains The honest take
Nylon Best Good, with treatment The workhorse. It springs back — fibres recover their twist under traffic, so it resists matting longer than anything else synthetic. Costs more. Worth it in stairs, halls and family rooms.
Triexta (PTT) Very good Excellent Stain resistance is built into the fibre, not sprayed on, so it doesn't wash off. Softer than nylon, slightly less resilient long-term. Excellent with kids.
Polyester (PET) Fair Excellent Beautifully soft, vivid colour, great value — and it mats. Fibres crush and stay crushed. Superb in a bedroom. A mistake on a staircase.
Olefin (polypropylene) Poor Water stains: excellent
Oil stains: terrible		 Solution-dyed and near-impervious to bleach and moisture, which is why it dominates basements and berbers. But it crushes badly and attracts oily soil. Loop constructions only.
Wool Excellent Naturally resistant; hates bleach The original, and still the most beautiful. Naturally flame-resistant, resilient, ages gracefully. Expensive, and it sheds for the first months. A luxury, and it behaves like one.
The single most common mistake: buying a plush, ultra-soft polyester because it feels wonderful in the showroom, and putting it on the stairs. Within eighteen months the nose of every tread is flattened and shining. Soft carpet belongs in bedrooms. Traffic areas want nylon.

Density and twist: the specs nobody explains

Two carpets can be the same fibre, the same price and the same weight, and one will look tired in three years while the other still looks new. The difference is in these numbers.

Density
How tightly the tufts are packed
The number-one predictor of how long carpet lasts. Dense carpet holds the fibres upright — they can't fall over and mat because there's nowhere to fall.
Test it in the showroom: bend a sample back on itself. If you can easily see the backing grinning through the tufts, it's not dense enough for a busy room.
Twist (TCB)
How tightly each yarn is spun
Measured in twists per inch and heat-set to lock it in. Loose twists untwist under foot, splay open, and that fuzzy, blurred look is the carpet uglying out.
Aim for 5+ twists per inch in any traffic area. The tighter the twist, the longer it holds its look.
Face weight
Ounces of fibre per square yard
The number salespeople lead with — and the most misleading on its own. A tall, loose, heavy pile weighs more than a short, dense one and will mat faster.
Weight without density is just taller fibre. Always ask for both.
Many manufacturers also publish a performance or traffic rating, usually out of 5 or 10, that rolls all of this into one figure. It's a genuinely useful shortcut — but it's the maker's own scale, so it only compares products within one brand's line, not across brands.

Pile styles, and what each one hides

Plush / Saxony (cut pile)
Smooth, even, formal. Feels wonderful — and shows every footprint and vacuum mark. Those aren't damage, they're light reflecting off bent fibres, but they irritate people who didn't expect them.
Frieze / Twist (cut pile)
Tightly twisted fibres that curl in every direction. The best footprint-hiding cut pile there is, and forgiving of soil. The practical family choice.
Textured (cut pile)
The middle ground and the best seller — fibres cut to varying heights so the surface breaks up light. Softer than frieze, hides more than plush.
Berber / Level loop
Uncut loops. Extremely durable and hides soil well. But a snagged loop can run like a stocking — and dog claws snag loops. Think hard before putting berber in a house with pets.
Cut-and-loop / Patterned
Cut and looped fibres combined into a sculpted pattern. Excellent at disguising traffic and soil. The pattern dates faster than a plain field.
Carpet tile
Modular squares, usually low loop. Replace one tile when it stains instead of the room. Standard in offices; increasingly good in basements and playrooms.

The underpad is half the floor

Nobody sees it, so it's the first thing people cheap out on, and it's the fastest way to destroy a good carpet. The pad absorbs the impact of every footstep. Without it, the carpet backing takes that impact instead — and the fibres crush from below. A cheap pad under a good carpet will void the carpet's warranty and cut its life roughly in half.

8 lb
Minimum density, residential
Density, not thickness, is what carries the load. For stairs and heavy traffic, go to 10 lb and up.
7/16"
Maximum thickness for most carpet
Thicker is not better. Too thick and the carpet flexes over the pad, the backing works loose, and seams and tack strips fail. Berber and loop want a thinner, firmer pad still.
Type
Rebond, foam, rubber, fibre
Rebond (the multicoloured one) is the residential standard and good value. Moisture-barrier pads earn their price in basements and with pets. Rubber is the premium choice for stairs.
If your budget is tight, spend it here first. A mid-range carpet on an excellent pad will outlast and out-look a premium carpet on a builder-grade one. Every time.

Room by room

Bedrooms
Go soft. Low traffic means polyester or triexta shine here — this is where plush is finally the right answer.
Stairs
The hardest-working carpet in the house. Nylon, dense, tight twist, firm pad. Never a soft plush.
Basements
Solution-dyed olefin or carpet tile, over a moisture-barrier pad. Assume the slab will get damp one day.
Offices
Low loop or carpet tile, glued direct. Replace the tile under the chair, not the floor.
Worth knowing before you commit
Seams are visible. Always. Broadloom comes 12 ft wide; any room wider than that has a seam. A good installer places it out of the light and out of the traffic path, but no one can make it invisible. Anyone who promises otherwise is selling.
Pets change every recommendation. Loops snag on claws. Choose cut pile, solution-dyed fibre so you can clean aggressively, and a moisture-barrier pad — accidents soak through to the pad and the subfloor, and that's what you smell months later.
Allergies: carpet is often blamed, and the picture is more mixed than people assume — it traps particles rather than letting them circulate, provided it's vacuumed properly with a HEPA machine. Hard surface with area rugs remains the safer bet for severe allergy sufferers.

Reading a spec sheet

Face weight (oz/yd²) Fibre per square yard. Useful only alongside density and pile height.
Density How tightly packed the tufts are. The strongest single predictor of carpet life.
Twist (TCB) Twists per inch. 5+ for traffic areas. Low twist means early fuzzing.
Pile height Fibre length. Taller feels more luxurious and mats sooner. Short and dense beats tall and loose.
Solution-dyed Colour added to the fibre while it's still liquid, so it goes all the way through. Fade- and bleach-resistant. A significant upgrade over dyeing the finished yarn.
Stain vs soil protection Two different things. Stain resistance blocks liquid pigment. Soil resistance stops dry dirt clinging to the fibre. Good carpet has both.
Broadloom width Typically 12 ft. It drives where seams land and how much waste your room generates — sometimes significantly.
Warranty Read the texture-retention clause — that's the anti-matting one, and it's the one that matters. Nearly all warranties require a compliant underpad and documented professional cleaning.

Making it last

✓  Vacuum traffic areas twice a week. Dry soil is abrasive — it cuts fibres from the inside. This is the single highest-value thing you can do.
✓  Blot spills, from the outside in. Never rub — rubbing drives the stain into the fibre and untwists it permanently.
✓  Professional hot-water extraction every 12–18 months. Most warranties require it, and require the receipts.
✓  Walk-off mats at every door. Most of what dulls carpet arrives on the soles of shoes.
✗  No supermarket "shampoo" products. They leave a sticky residue that then attracts dirt — the treated area gets dirtier faster than the rest of the room.

Common questions

Why does the carpet in the hallway look worse than the rest?
That's traffic-lane matting, and it's normal — the fibres there have been bent and untwisted thousands of times more than the ones under the furniture. Density and twist slow it down. Nothing stops it. It's why fibre choice matters most exactly where people walk.
Is the expensive soft carpet worth it?
In a bedroom, absolutely — that's what it's for. In a hallway or on stairs, that same softness usually means finer, less resilient fibre, and it will look worse sooner than a firmer, denser nylon costing less.
Can I put carpet in a basement?
Yes — with solution-dyed olefin or carpet tile, and a moisture-barrier pad, on a slab you've confirmed is dry. If the basement has ever taken on water, use carpet tile so you can lift and replace a section instead of the whole room.
My new carpet is shedding. Is something wrong?
No. Cut pile releases loose fibre left over from manufacturing for the first few weeks — wool for longer. Vacuum normally and it stops. Sprouting, where a single long tuft rises above the surface, is also normal: snip it level, never pull it.
How long should carpet last?
A quality nylon on a good pad, vacuumed and cleaned: 12 to 15 years, and often more in bedrooms. A soft polyester on a builder-grade pad in a busy hallway: 3 to 5 before it looks tired. Same room, same budget, radically different outcome — the specs are the whole story.
How much do I need?
Carpet is quoted in square yards or square feet, but it's cut from a 12 ft roll — so the shape of your rooms drives the waste, not just their area. A long narrow room can waste far more than a big square one. This is one where a real takeoff beats any calculator. Send us a sketch with dimensions and we'll price it properly, pad and install included.

Tell us the room, and we'll tell you the fibre

Stairs, kids, dogs, a basement that's been damp once — every one of those changes the answer. Come and feel the samples, and let us do the takeoff.

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