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The type of carpet you use in different areas of your home will make a difference in the overall aesthetic of the room and how long it will last, and the type of carpet you should use for each room will depend on the purpose of the room. We will go over everything you need to know about choosing the perfect carpet for each room in your home.
Choosing the best carpet for a home means keeping in mind the type of room the carpet is being installed in and the carpet’s colour, fibre type, style, and features necessary for the activities that occur in that room. Features to consider include durability, stain resistance, and odour treatment.
If you want to know more about the process of choosing the perfect carpet for your home and all the things you’ll need to consider so you can feel confident with your carpet choice, keep reading!
Which Rooms are You Installing Carpet In?
Your carpet choice is likely to differ depending on the room. While it may be easier to install the same carpet throughout all carpeted areas of your house, it’s recommended that homeowners choose varying carpet types for each room depending on the purpose of each room.
For example, hallways, entryways, family rooms, and children’s bedrooms are high-traffic areas and are more prone to wear and tear. Durable, stain-resistant, and easy-to-clean carpets with short fibres are best for these areas.
Areas that receive less traffic include guest rooms, music rooms, libraries, and visitor living rooms. For low-traffic areas, you can opt for carpets with long fibres and have more freedom in your aesthetic choices without worrying so much about stain resistance and durability.
If you have unique rooms in your home, like an art studio or movie theatre, you’ll also want to consider the activities that will occur in that room. An art studio room will probably benefit from vinyl floors or carpet that is stain-resistant. A movie theatre room will benefit from a carpet that has short fibres, is easy to clean, and is sound resistant.
Rooms that occupy young children for long periods of time, such as children’s bedrooms, are best suited with child-friendly or family-friendly carpets. Rooms, where your pets spend a lot of time, should have pet-friendly carpets. We’ll tell you more about these carpets later.
We have some fantastic lookbooks with rooms and style information and advice that will help to inspire you.
Aesthetic Choices: Pile, Colour, and Style
When making your carpet selection, you’ll have the freedom to make aesthetic choices based on your personal carpet preferences, the overall look of the room, and the availability of colours, styles, and piles of carpet that also fit your carpet feature needs. We will go over the carpet features in the following sections, but it’s a good idea to keep in mind your desired look and style as you select a carpet based on those necessary features.
Pile is the look of the top surface of the carpet, which is influenced by whether the carpet fibres are looped at the top or cut so they’re standing straight up.
Loop pile carpets have loops that are uniform or they are looped at varying lengths called patterned loops. Sometimes these loops can vary in colour to create certain patterns. Loop pile carpets are not the best for homes with small children or pets, as these loops can easily become snagged as the carpet wears over time. They also don’t provide the added padding and comfort that cut pile carpets do.
Straight or cut pile carpets are more common in homes but need to be replaced more often than loop pile carpets. These carpets have varying pile lengths, fibre thicknesses, and density (or how close together the fibres are). The thicker and longer these fibres are, the more cushion the carpet has.
Cut pile carpets can come in various twist styles to prevent the look of footprints and vacuum tracks across the carpet. Twist styles are identified when fibres of the carpet are twisted together to create thicker fibres, and sometimes these fibres are different colours.
The colours of the carpet vary greatly, but the most common colours are browns, greys, tans, and whites. After you’ve chosen the style of carpet, you can choose from a wide selection of colours that carpet comes in based on your own personal preferences and what you think will look best in your room.
Remember that white and lighter carpets are more prone to show stains and dirt, while dark carpets are going to show things like light pet hair, crumbs, and spots that were recently cleaned.
Styles vary by the patterns, weaves, textures, and looks that the carpets come in.
Looks available by Carpet One include:
Carpet Fibers
The type of material that your carpet fibres are made up of will greatly influence the qualities that the carpet offer, including durability, stain resistance, and aesthetics. The material type of carpet fibre varies based on your preferences and can be either natural or synthetic. The most popular types of fibres you’ll find at most any carpet shop include
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Wool (natural, long-lasting, hypoallergenic, soft)
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Wool blend (long-lasting, hypoallergenic, soft)
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Polyester (synthetic, fade resistant, hypoallergenic)
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Triexta (synthetic, soft, moisture resistant, stain resistant)
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Nylon (synthetic, soft, durable, stain resistant)
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Polypropylene (synthetic, easy to clean, wool substitute)
Durability
Especially for rooms and areas that are high traffic, you’ll want to look out for carpets that are durable. Durable carpets will last you longer and are more resistant to wear and tear, and are going to look like new for a more prolonged period of time than less durable carpets.
Qualities of durable carpet include a high number of stitches per inch, a face weight of 32 or more ounces per square yard, a density number of over 5,000, solution-dyed colouring, twisted and heat-treated piles or tight loop piles, and polypropylene or jute backings. Look for these qualities when selecting a carpet to ensure it’s durable and will last you a long time.
Made in Australia, for our diverse Australian climate, Desire offers the latest colours, modern manufacturing technology, resilience to household wear and tear, and the softness you desire under your feet. So you and your family can play, entertain and relax to your heart’s content, knowing your carpet will look, feel and smell great for years to come.
Stain Resistance and Odor Treatment
Stains and odours reduce the quality and look of your carpet, causing you to need to replace your carpet sooner. If you use stain-resistant or odour-treated carpet in your home, especially in areas where children and pets are often present, you’ll significantly prolong the life and aesthetics of your carpet.
Carpets with stain and odour-resistant qualities are either naturally resistant or sprayed with a chemical coating to repel stains and odours while avoiding the absorption of liquid that creates such stains or odours.
Carpet One offers carpet products with its exclusive Active 8 Odour Treatment that help neutralises unwanted odours from your carpets. Explore our products here.
Insect and Fire Protection
Other qualities to look for in your carpet selection are insect repelling and fire protection properties if bug issues or fire risks are a concern for you. Carpets that have insect repelling properties are coated with a chemical spray that repels bugs from entering your home without any residual chemical odours. To make synthetic carpets fire-resistant, they are coated with a chemical spray that prevents fire from travelling across the carpet. Wool carpets are naturally flame resistant.
Weight and Density
During your carpet selection, you should also consider the weight and density of the carpet, which affects the aesthetics, feel, and durability of the carpet. This determines how heavy and thick the carpet is.
The weight and density of the carpet are usually measured on a scale between 25 ounces and 50 ounces per square yard. These ounces refer to the number of yarn strands. The higher the number of ounces, the greater the quality of the carpet. Carpets with a higher density are easier to clean and last longer, regardless of how long the piles are.
Carpet Pad or Underlay
Now, this doesn’t have so much to do with the carpet itself, but rather what goes under the carpet to act as a buffer and cushion between the carpet and the floorboards. You should know that when choosing a carpet pad, the thicker the pad, the more bouncy and squishier your carpet is going to be.
Thinner pads result in harder carpeted floors, which are ideal for high-traffic areas that don’t include bedrooms, living rooms, or family rooms. Don’t buy padding that is too thick, though, because thick padding is more prone to rippling and flattening out over time.
The material that carpet pads are made of varies by type, and each material has varying qualities, pros, and cons.
| Material | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Rubber | Easy to install, holds moisture well, insect-proof | Loses strength over time, is sensitive to heat, flattens over time |
| Felt Fiber | Synthetic and natural, good for low-traffic areas | Allergenic |
| Rebond | Most popular, inexpensive, a fuse of multiple foam materials, good quality | |
| Prime Urethane | Moisture resistant, heat resistant, easy to install, good insulation | Not as resilient as other pads, expensive |
Eco-Friendly, Pet-Friendly, and Family-Friendly
Carpets that are eco-friendly are often made of recycled materials and are more durable prolonging the lifespan of the carpet and reducing waste. They are also generally hypoallergenic and there are fewer chemicals and dyes involved in the manufacturing and treatment process. Eco-friendly carpet is often installed with eco-friendly underpadding.
Pet-friendly carpet is any carpet that can withstand the usual wear and tear that animals cause to carpets, as well as their messes and occasional accidents. These carpets are often more durable, stain-resistant, have shorter piles, are odour-resistant, and are not moisture-absorbent.
Family-friendly carpets are typically made for areas where families spend a lot of time together, such as living rooms or family rooms. They’re often treated with odour-resistant and stain-resistant chemicals and are generally more durable than regular carpets.
Questions and Answers
What is the best type of professional carpet cleaning?
The best way to clean carpets professionally is to hire a carpet cleaner who will come to your home and get the whole job done for you in one day, restoring your carpets to like new. They will work to remove any stains and shampoo your carpets to remove any dust, dander, or dirt.
This is best done during the moving process, either at your new home before you’ve moved all your furniture in, or at your old home after you’ve removed all your furniture. But as long as you’re able to clear your furniture and belongings out of a room, this can be done at any time.
If you don’t want to hire a professional cleaner, you can purchase or rent a carpet cleaning machine, along with the branded carpet cleaning solution. These are available for rent at most department stores or for purchase at most home-improvement stores. Rug Doctor is a great brand that produces carpet cleaning machines and solutions, and each machine is of varying cleaning powers.
What type of carpet is best for absorbing sound?
The type of carpet that is best for absorbing sound is a thick and dense carpet. Generally, the softer a carpet is to the feet, the more sound absorbent is. Thicker carpet prevents sound from bouncing off the floor or travelling through the floor to be heard by those on a lower floor level.
The thickness and density of the under padding also determines how sound absorbent your carpet is, and is what contributes most to sound absorbency. If you’re in an apartment building, be sure to purchase rental-friendly carpet.
What type of flooring is the best and most durable carpet replacement?
The best flooring option to replace your carpet is vinyl plank flooring. It is waterproof, extremely durable, scuff-resistant, affordable, and easy to install. The only downsides are it’s not the best for outdoor flooring and isn’t the most eco-friendly option.
What type of runner would be best on carpets?
Any carpet runner to put over your carpet is great, so long as the fibre piles are short and the runner is relatively thin. It should fit the size of the hallway or walkway area without covering that area from wall to wall.
What type of tape works best for vinyl-backed carpets?
You can purchase any carpet tape from most home-improvement stores. My life, Duck, and Xfasten are all great brands with carpet tapes that have a lot of good online reviews.
What type of carpeting is best for a studio?
We would recommend a carpet designed for high-traffic areas that are flat and manufactured with low loop piles rather than cut piles for your studio. The studio is generally designed for work and creation rather than relaxation, and art studios especially can get messy, so you’ll also want something stain-resistant.
What is the best grade of carpet?
High-end grades of carpet usually have a face weight of between 40 and 60 ounces. They have higher quality fibres and backing systems, have more pile density and have higher tuft twists.
Find the Right Carpet for Your Home
At Carpet One we want to make sure your shopping experience with us is as simple and straightforward as possible.
When you go into our stores all around Australia our products are displayed in logical, easily identified categories and supported by customer-friendly descriptions. We want you to be able to browse at your leisure and not feel rushed or pushed, but at the same time, our expert staff are always on hand to help when you need it. We are confident you will walk out of our store more informed about the best floor or home products for your lifestyle, taste and budget.
We have carried the same approach into our online showroom. We make it easy for you to browse our website so you get the information you need when you need it.
Find out more about how to shop with us.
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