Carpet, chosen on the specs that matter.

A carpet is fibre, twist and density, in that order

Carpet is yarn tufted through a backing and locked in place, and everything about how it will age comes down to three properties: what the fibre is made of, how tightly each yarn is twisted, and how closely those yarns are packed together. Colour and softness are what sell a carpet in a showroom. These three decide whether it still looks like the sample in five years.

Almost every complaint about carpet is really a complaint about one of them. Traffic lanes that have gone flat and shiny are a twist and density problem. A basement carpet that smells is a fibre problem. A bedroom carpet that felt lovely and looked exhausted within eighteen months is usually all three at once.

The four fibres, and how each one behaves

The practical version: if the room has traffic, buy nylon or triexta. If the room is a quiet bedroom and you want it soft and saturated in colour, polyester is good value. Olefin belongs in a loop or a berber where its crushing weakness is structurally contained, and in damp spaces where its moisture resistance earns its keep.

Cut pile, loop and pattern

Construction is the next fork, and it changes the look and the wear behaviour more than the fibre does.

Cut pile is what most people picture: the loops are sheared open so the yarn ends stand up. Within that, a plush or saxony is smooth and formal and shows every footprint and vacuum track. A textured or frieze cut pile uses tightly twisted yarns pointing in different directions, which hides marks extremely well and is the practical choice for a family room.

Loop pile leaves the loops intact. Level loop and berber are hard-wearing, resist crushing well and clean easily, which is why they dominate commercial floors. The trade is that a pulled loop can run, so households with cats that snag or dogs with untrimmed nails should think twice.

Pattern combines cut and loop in the same carpet to create texture and a printed-in design without dye. It hides soil well and adds visual interest. It also has to be pattern matched at seams, which uses more material and more labour, and that shows up in the estimate.

Face weight lies. Density does not.

Face weight is ounces of fibre per square yard, and it is the number that gets quoted in every showroom. On its own it is close to meaningless, because the same amount of yarn can be spread thinly across a tall pile or packed tightly into a short one. The tall one feels more luxurious in a sample and mats down first.

Density is how closely the tufts are packed, and it is what actually resists matting. There is a low-tech test that works: fold a sample back on itself so the pile splays open. If you can easily see the backing through the gap, it is not dense enough for a busy room. If it is hard to see, it will hold up.

Twist level is the third number and it is the one nobody mentions. Each yarn is spun and heat set, and matting is fundamentally those twists coming undone and the fibres tangling with their neighbours. A tightly twisted, well heat-set yarn stays a distinct tuft. A loosely twisted plush unravels into a matted lane down the middle of your hallway, and no amount of cleaning brings it back, because the fibres are not dirty, they are deformed.

The pad is half the floor

Cushion is where budgets get quietly trimmed, and it is the worst possible place to do it. The pad controls how the carpet feels, how long it lasts and how well it insulates against sound and cold. It also protects the carpet backing, which is what fails when a carpet fails.

The instinct is to buy the thickest, softest pad available. That is wrong. Too much cushion lets the carpet flex excessively every time someone steps on it, which works the backing until the fibre bond breaks down, and most manufacturers exclude that from their warranty by specifying a maximum thickness. For residential cut pile, roughly 7/16 of an inch at 6 to 8 pound density is a typical target. Berbers, loops and commercial installations need something thinner and firmer, and stairs need firmer still.

Density is again the number that matters more than thickness. A half inch of dense rebond behaves very differently from a half inch of soft prime foam, and the difference is measured in years.

Where carpet belongs

Bedrooms, stairs, upstairs hallways, family rooms, home offices, media rooms, basements that are dry, and any room where somebody sits on the floor. Carpet does three things no hard surface does: it is warm, it absorbs sound instead of reflecting it, and it is forgiving when someone falls on it. In a house with small children or elderly residents, that last point is a safety consideration rather than a comfort one.

It also solves acoustic problems that hard floors create. A room with hard surfaces on the floor, the walls and the ceiling is a room where nobody can follow a conversation. Carpet on an upper floor is the most effective single thing you can do about footfall noise reaching the room below, which is why apartment buildings so often require it.

Where it does not belong: kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, mudrooms and entries. Not because it fails immediately, but because the maintenance never ends and it will always look worse than it should. Those rooms want tile or luxury vinyl plank.

How we install it

Prep, tack strip and pad

The subfloor gets swept clean, fasteners set below the surface, squeaks fixed and any damaged decking replaced, because everything you leave under a carpet you will feel through it. Tack strip is fixed around the perimeter at the correct gap from the wall, and pad is laid, butted rather than overlapped, seams taped, and stapled or bonded down depending on the substrate. Where the substrate needs more than a clean, our subfloor preparation page covers it.

Seaming and stretching

Seams get planned before anything is cut, so they run with the light rather than across it and land away from doorways and high traffic. They are seamed hot with tape and the edges sealed so they cannot fray.

Then the carpet is power stretched, not kicked in. This is the step that separates a carpet installation from a carpet delivery. A knee kicker alone cannot put enough tension into broadloom, and the result is a floor that ripples within a year or two and has to be lifted and restretched. A power stretcher pulls the carpet tight across the full width of the room before it is hooked onto the tack strip. Anyone who tells you it is not necessary is telling you what they do not own.

Trimming and transitions

Edges are trimmed and tucked into the gully between tack strip and wall, doorways get a proper transition to whatever the next material is, and any transition to a hard surface is set so the height change is not a trip point.

Stairs are their own job

Stairs take every trip through a house and concentrate it onto a narrow band, then bend the carpet backing tightly over each nosing, which stretches the pile open exactly where feet land. That combination is brutal, and it is why the same carpet that looks fine in a bedroom can look worn out on a staircase within two years.

So stairs get specified separately: denser, tighter twist, lower profile than the rooms they connect, and a firmer pad. Installation method matters too. A waterfall wrap runs the carpet straight over the nosing and down to the next tread, which is quicker and works on closed, boxed stairs. An upholstered or cap and band install wraps each tread and riser individually, hugging the nosing. It costs more in labour, it is the right answer on open-sided stairs, on curved or winder treads, and with any heavier or patterned carpet, and it simply looks better.

Broadloom or carpet tile in a commercial space

For offices, tenant improvements and most retail, carpet tile usually wins. It installs in phases around a working business, sections lift for access to floor boxes and cabling, and a stained or damaged tile gets swapped from attic stock instead of forcing a whole-room replacement. It also generates far less waste on an irregular floor plan.

Broadloom still has a place: hospitality, boardrooms, cinemas and anywhere a continuous surface or a large-scale pattern is the point, and a visible grid would work against it. Either way, commercial work is specified around traffic classification and cleaning regime rather than around how the sample feels in the hand.

Cleaning, and what actually ruins carpet

• Vacuum more often than feels necessary, and slowly. Soil ground into the base of the pile is abrasive and cuts fibre with every footstep.
• Set the beater bar height correctly, and turn it off entirely on loop and berber, where it can fuzz or pull loops.
• Blot spills, never rub. Rubbing opens the twist and creates a permanently textured patch that reads as a stain forever.
• Use walk-off mats at every exterior door. Most of the dirt in a carpet arrives on shoes in the first few steps.
• Have it hot water extracted periodically by someone who will rinse properly. Detergent residue left in the pile attracts soil faster than no cleaning at all.
• Deal with pet accidents down to the pad. Surface cleaning leaves the source in the cushion and the smell returns with humidity.

When a hard surface is the better answer

If the room gets wet, gets muddy, or takes rolling loads, carpet is the wrong material and no specification fixes that. Kitchens, bathrooms and entries belong to tile or luxury vinyl plank. If allergies are a driver, a hard surface with washable rugs gives you the softness where you want it and a surface you can genuinely clean everywhere else. And if you want a floor that becomes more valuable rather than one that is consumed, hardwood is the only material here that can be renewed instead of replaced. For a wood look in a dry room at a lower cost, laminate is worth comparing.

Plenty of homes end up mixing: carpet upstairs and on the stairs, hard surface everywhere else. That is usually the right answer rather than a compromise. The flooring comparison shows how the five materials stack up, and when you know the rooms, send us the list and we will measure and scope it. Our flooring installation page explains how a job runs from measure to final trim.

Carpet questions we get asked