New carpet flooring can add beauty and style to any interior space. Whether you’re considering durable wall-to-wall carpeting or a bright,colorful area rug, the perfect type of carpet can enhance the rest of your room with ease. However, we know that choosing a carpet or flooring type can be a daunting task, especially when you’re considering everyday use frequented by pets accidents and the little one’s spills.
At Western Carpet One Floor & Home in Saskatoon, our flooring experts can guide you in the right direction while meeting the needs of your personal interior design scheme and lifestyle.
Carpet accounts for the majority of flooring on the market and is a great option for almost any space. If you’re looking to invest in a carpet that is beautiful and durable, check out the different types and styles of carpet to find one that best suits your interior.
Types of Carpet: Which One Works Best For My Home?
Choosing the most beautiful and durable carpet starts with the type of carpet that is best for your space. Part of what determines which carpet is best for your home is its specific make, and this includes understanding the differences between the main fibers and the texture of a specific carpet.
There are four common fibers:
Nylon
Polyester
Polypropylene
Wool
Here’s a closer look at each fiber type and how these types of carpet can benefit your home!
Nylon Carpet
Nylon is a common carpet fiber that is incredibly durable and versatile, which makes nylon carpet a great fiber choice for many areas of the home.
Some benefits of nylon include:
Durability: excellent resilience to fading and stains, so it’s able to keep its appearance for longer than other options.
Soft texture: Nylon carpets are also soft to the touch, and some are even engineered for increased softness.
Stain-Resistant: Most nylon carpets are treated to protect against spills and stains.
While nylon is an excellent choice for many spaces, it’s also important to keep in mind that there are a variety of qualities of nylon, so be sure to do your research when looking for the perfect nylon carpet in your home!
Polyester Carpet
Polyester carpet fibers are some of the most popular available today. Polyester carpeting is known for its durability and price point, but also for its naturally stain-resistant qualities. While polyester is not as resilient as nylon in some cases, it’s still a great choice for homes looking for both durable and beautiful carpets.
Did you know? Unlike nylon, polyester is naturally stain-resistant, and it’s also engineered to repel liquids from seeping below its surface! For this reason, polyester is a durable carpet option for most high-traffic living spaces, including bedrooms, living rooms, and hallways.
Polypropylene Carpet
Polypropylene carpet, also known as olefin, is a synthetic carpet fiber that offers unique characteristics. It is known for its wool-like appearance and is most often used to create berber carpets. While polypropylene carpet is a budget-friendly choice, it’s not necessarily the most durable.
When purchasing this carpet type, keep in mind:
Unlike nylon, polypropylene does not bounce back as easily. For this reason, polypropylene carpeting works best in spaces like offices and low-traffic areas.
Some Berber carpets with low piles can offer moderate durability.
When it comes to stain resistance, polypropylene carpet performs well.
Wool Carpet
For a truly natural fiber option, wool carpet offers many of the same features of man-made fibers, making it a popular choice. Wool carpeting is a luxurious statement piece that is meant to last, and it is an investment. For this reason, we advise wool carpeting for low-traffic areas, including guest rooms, bedrooms, and office spaces.
Benefits of wool carpeting:
One of the many features of wool carpet is that it is hypoallergenic, so it’s perfect for those who experience allergies.
While wool is not as durable as nylon, it is flame and dirt-resistant.
In many ways, wool carpet is a great choice for a variety of styles.
Carpet Texture: Which Texture Is Best For My Floor?
There are also four common carpet textures to explore. These carpet textures include Berber, Loop, Cut Pile, and Cut Loop. Not sure which type works best for your flooring? Here's a closer look at these carpet textures and what they can offer your space.
Berber Carpet
Berber carpet is a looped carpet tufted with thick yarn. It often has random specks of color in contrast to a base hue and is a beautiful addition to any space.
Some benefits of berber carpeting include:
Durability
Stain-resistance
Pet and spill-proof
Some common areas where Berber carpet can be installed include kids’ playrooms, bedrooms, living rooms, and offices.
Loop Carpet
Loop carpet has yarns that are looped and uncut on the carpet surface. The pile height can vary from low, tightly constructed to a more luxurious high-level pile.
Some things to consider with loop carpet:
Loop carpets can easily hide dirt and spills.
This style is ideal for heavy traffic areas like kids’ rooms and family rooms.
The shadings in this carpet will resist traffic patterns while making colors appear deeper and richer. In other words, there’s no need to vacuum every time your carpet gets walked on.
Cut Pile Carpet
Cut pile carpet consists of yarns that are cut at the ends. The soft feel of cut carpet makes it a perfect choice for the most comfortable areas of your home — bedrooms, living rooms, and family rooms.
There are five basic styles of cut pile carpet:
Velvet
Saxony
Frieze
Shag
Cable
The primary difference among these styles is the number of twists in the yarns that will ultimately influence the carpet’s durability. For example, plush Saxony carpeting is often installed in formal settings, whereas textured plushes are less formal and help hide footprints and vacuum marks. There are a wide variety of looks and colors in cut-style carpets. When you’re looking for durability, remember — the tighter the twist level, the better the carpet will perform.
Cut & Loop Style Carpet
As its name suggests, cut and loop style carpet has a combination of high-cut tufts and lower loops in a variety of sculptured patterns. This is why you can find innumerable patterns in beautiful shades of cut and loop carpets today. This type of carpet offers good performance but isslightly less durable than loop carpet. Tough and durable, cut and loop carpets can be used in any place that gets a lot of activity. These carpets are great at adding a dimension of texture that creates an enhanced plush profile and camouflages traffic patterning.
Choose The Perfect Carpet Flooring for Your Home
Carpet flooring is often used in living rooms, bedrooms, family rooms, and kids’ playrooms because it adds a level of coziness to the interior space. The benefits to installing a carpet are endless from safety to added insulation and acoustic dampening—this is why you often find carpeting in movie theatre's because it absorbs sound.
Carpet For Your Family Spaces
When it comes to your living room, carpet is ideal as this is often where your family spends most of their time so why not add a little comfort? Common misperceptions about carpet for the living room include that it’s difficult to maintain. However, thanks to the latest in carpet technology, carpet is often better at hiding dirt and stains than hardwood. If you’re concerned about the kids spilling their drinks or pets making a mess on the living room floor, choose a modern carpet for the living room in a bold pattern as this makes it easier to hide any stray crumbs.
Have an active family or pets? Explore durable, synthetic materials fibers that are versatile and stain-resistant, like:
Do you require a cozy and quiet space? Consider natural wool carpeting which is unmatched in luxurious feel underfoot.
Choosing A Carpet for Bedrooms
Since the living room serves a different purpose than the bedroom, often becoming the hub of family conversations, happy hours, and late-night movie marathons, its carpet needs are a little bit different. Our bedrooms are designed for relaxation and a place to lay our heads at the end of a long day.
Because of this, when choosing a bedroom carpet consider:
Finding a carpet with a pleasantly soft pile underfoot.
Looking for plush styles in wool and nylon.
Your bedroom carpet likely won’t get as much foot traffic as the living room, so you can splurge on higher piles for maximum comfort.
Still not sure which carpet type is best for your space? Find out more about each carpet and the different types available for your home by swinging by the store and meeting with our helpful team. Our flooring experts can help you determine which carpet works best for your space. Visit our website to find a local Carpet One near you and let us guide you to beautifully, durable carpet floors made for the modern challenges of your home today!