How to... Tips for Selecting & Caring for Carpeting

SHOPPING FOR CARPETING & RUGS

Choices have never been greater, or—perhaps—more confusing. We hope these tips will make it easier for you to determine the best choices and options for your circumstances, whether you’re looking for residential carpet or commercial carpet. Basically, make lists and collect samples of what your current wallcovering/curtains/upholstery consists of. Rough measurements are helpful, too. Bring it all with you when you come in and we’ll do our best to help. Once you decide on a couple of prime candidates, we can come out, take exact measurements and give you a more precise quote on which to base your final selection. Let’s get started... Click to show the lists of things to consider .

LISTS

Lifestyle/Decor Issues:

What is the room used for?
Radiant heat? Carpeting and padding may not be the best choice over radiant heat due to their propensity to insulate the room from what’s below. However, there are some types of carpeting/padding that may do fine with radiant heat, so check with your radiant heat folks for their recommendations.
Kids, pets, or high traffic patterns in the area to be carpeted?
How much sunlight will fall on the carpet & for how many hours/day
Does the room have southern, northern, eastern, or western exposure?
Any patio doors? Sliding? Swing/fold (direction)?
What is under the existing flooring?
What do you want done with existing baseboard and moldings?

Goal(s):

Visual warmth/Insulation
Noise absorption
Spruce up existing decor
Completely change the room’s look
Refurbish for sale
Refurbish for rent
Cover existing flooring
Other?

Budget Considerations:

How long do you want it to last?
Is there existing padding to reuse?
Are there existing tack strips to reuse?
What is your balance between carpet quality & padding quality? (see “Tips” below)
Cost of subfloor preparation
Cost of removal/disposal of existing flooring, if needed
Cost of moving furniture/appliances
All incidental material and installation costs
Carpeting
Padding

Measurements—Make sketches of the room to be carpeted, approximate measures are fine at this point:

Locations of doors (Do they open? Which direction, in or out?),
Location of windows,
Major pieces of furniture, architectural details (e.g. fireplace) that will need to be worked around
Use this rough estimator to get preliminary square-footage estimates for the carpeting. This will give square feet; carpeting is sold by the square yard, so divide the square-foot total by 9 (9 sq.ft. = 1 sq.yd.).

Tips:

Buy the best quality padding you can afford, go by density rather than thickness. Good padding will add years to any quality of carpeting; when it comes time to replace carpeting, you may well be able to reuse the pad; either way, you’ll reap long-term savings.
Read & follow the manufacturer’s pad recommendations; failure to comply may void warranties.
Buy the best carpeting you can afford. If it’s necessary to choose between carpet and padding, we’d put our money on the pad, all else being equal.
Save a good-sized carpet remnant for future repairs.
Colors/Patterns
- Is there a predominant color theme you want to play up or play down?
- Are you wanting to visually expand the space or make it smaller & cozier?
- Lighter colors will reflect more light and give the feeling of larger space.
- Plain-colors show dirt and traffic more quickly than patterned surfaces
- Thicker piles show traffic more than shorter piles
- Large-scale floor patterns can expand a space, but proportions are critical and a too-large pattern may overpower a smaller room.
- Darker, richer colors tend to cozy up large spaces
- Area rugs can be used divide a large carpeted space into specific areas, and add seasonal variance. Best for non-patterned carpeting with shorter pile.
Fibers—See the popup Fiber Summary Quick-Ref

Click to hide lists.

SAMPLES

Samples IN— Upholstery, curtains/drapes, wallpaper, trim, wall paint. Bring in pictures of installations (from magazines, for example) that appeal to you, and bring in photos of what you definitely do NOT want. Both will help narrow the search. Lacking photos, make notes of any carpeting you come across that you like: color/surface texture/name if you can get it.

Samples OUT—Take home several of our loaner samples and lay them on your floor. Try to envision them as covering the entire surface, and see how they suit you. Live with them for a week or so; sometimes what looks great at first begins to be not-so-great after the first few days. It might help to put samples down one-at-a-time, or at least separate them as widely as possible.

CARE & MAINTENANCE TIPS

We’ve gathered together a few tips, from around the web, on caring for and maintaining your carpeting. Most of us typically fail to follow these bits of advice (like not walking barefoot on your soft new floor! What’s the point of thick, soft carpeting if you can’t squiggle your toes in it??), but if you’re intent on getting the most out of your carpet investment, it will be worth your while to read through these tips and implement what you can.

First of all—Save a good-sized carpet remnant for future repairs!

Brands:

Philadelphia • Sutton
Horizon • Gulistan
Mohawk • Southwind
StainMaster • Aladdin
Shaw ... & more!

Useful
“Quick Guides”

Fiber Summary Quick-Ref

Rough Square-foot Estimator

Shopping for Carpeting
& Rugs

Professional Installation

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Secondly, know that shedding, of which there are two types, is a normal characteristic of most new carpeting. Although large vacuums are used to remove the loose fibers left after a carpet is sheared, some of the cut fibers will fall deep into the pile, resulting in minor shedding when the carpet is new. Carpets made with wool or man-made Staple fibers will have a certain amount of fibers that do not get anchored into the backing. These unanchored fibers will “shed” and will be removed during the first several vacuumings, with the length of shedding time dependent on the height of the pile and frequency of vacumming. Shedding will not affect the durability or life of the carpet as the fibers are loose and not inherently a part of the carpet to begin with. They represent only a very small percent of the yarns in the carpet.

Dirt & Grit
- Use commercial-type floor mats at entry doors.
- Remove your street shoes when you come inside the house.
- Grit not removed will cut the fibers and destroy the carpet. Consider the purchase of a high-end vacuum or even installing a high-capacity central vac. Either will enhance the life of the carpeting by removing the deep-down grit. Padding will also help as it allows the suction of air from below up throught the carpet, bringing along embedded dirt.
- Vacuum often, even daily in high-traffic areas.
- Have carpets professionally cleaned annually. Detergent residue can be left behind by small rental units, causing carpets to become dirty more quickly. A professional cleaner will use machines powerful enough to deep clean, removing all traces of detergent as well as dirt. A professional outfit can also reapply stain protection.
Stains (see below for links to specific stain removal pages)
- Solution-dyed polypropeline is probably the most stain-resistant carpet fiber available. If your carpeting is going to be in a stain-risky spot, try to minimize the risk with polypropeline.
- Walking barefoot on carpets leaves behind natural skin oils which, over time, will stain a carpet and attract dirt to the oily residue.
- Spills are best blotted up, not scrubbed out (which is more apt to scrub them in). If spills occur clean them up immediately.
- If possible, ban food and drink from carpeted areas.
- The built-in stain protection in your carpet will break down with use and cleaning and will need renewing to keep the carpet clean. Have a protective barrier such as Scotchgard sprayed on the carpet each time it is cleaned.
Matting/Crushing
- Use carpet protectors under furniture legs to help spread the weight.
- Move furniture around periodically to relieve the pressure on the carpet fibers.
- Carpet dents can often be steamed out by holding a steam iron about two inches above the dent. Plastic fibers will melt! Don’t place a hot iron directly on nylon or other plastic fibers.

Some off-site links for cleaning, care, maintenance

All links open in a new window.

Good Housekeeping Carpet Stain Removal Guide—A list of specific stains and GH’s recommendations for removing them
Wear-Dated’s general carpet care page
Beaulieu Carpet—huge selection of PDFs on carpet care and everything else you’d ever want to know about carpeting.
Mohawk’s stain removal guides
Shaw Carpet Care Guides—carpet care, stain removal, general cleaning tips
Stainmaster—stain removal guide