Carpet Choices: A Detailed Carpet Purchase Guide

Carpet Choices: A Detailed Carpet Purchase Guide

Are you looking to create a home that suits your taste and style? Then consider the many choices of carpet that are available.

Do you remember buying a new home? You looked at a great many possibilities and then, bingo, there it was – the perfect house! It fit within your budget, and it also matched your style and lifestyle.

Because the floor covering in your home impacts the overall outlook the same way, it should be considered with the same critical eye.

Here you’ll discover beautiful yet practical, elegant and easy styles– the entire spectrum of carpet choices available for every room.

Choosing the right carpet style or design is all about knowing the right combination of performance, aesthetics, and budget that suits your lifestyle and your home.

Six Basic Styles of Carpet

Texture, Cable, Loop, Saxony, Frieze, and Patterned.

Each carpet style has its unique characteristics and performance capabilities.

You should carefully consider each style’s qualities, features, and conditions in making your buying decision.

Texture:  For Wall-to-Wall Casual

This is a very common cut pile carpet that has alternating twists of yarn, often creating a tonal appearance.

The textured surface of this carpet does a great job of hiding vacuum marks and footprints while creating a more casual atmosphere in the room.

Textured carpets are perfect for all areas in the home; they are ideal for today’s active families and are available in a broad range of colors and densities.

Saxony: For a Plush, Velvet Touch

For a more traditional, formal, and elegant look, consider the beautiful Saxony.

This style has a soft, smooth, velvet plush look and a luxurious feel.

Each yarn has a uniform twist and finish, making this carpet the perfect solution for a master bedroom, dining room, or a formal living room.

This style is not a great choice for high traffic areas or rooms with playful children.

Also, be aware that this style will show footprints and vacuum marks.

Frieze: Stands Up to Traffic and Time

For an active area, a frieze carpet may be a perfect choice.

This is a cut pile style that has a very high twist level, meaning every strand of yarn is twisted so tightly that they actually curl over at the end.

This creates a textured surface with a casual appearance, and a carpet of high durability and very good wear-ability.

These carpets perform well in high-traffic areas and can go anywhere in your home.

They also help minimize footprint markings and are available in numerous pile heights that create a variety of different looks.

Friezes may also have flecking of neutral color for additional styling.  This style may also be referred to as a cut-pile Berber.

Patterned or Cut & Loop: Great For Most Patterns of Living

Patterned or cut & loop is a combination of cut and looped yarns that creates pattern effects by the variation in surface textures.

Like loop styles, these carpets are low profile and thus perform well; however, because of their density, seams are sometimes more visible in this type of carpet.

Patterned carpets are very fashionable, and can be used in casual and traditional rooms.

With a huge selection of patterns to choose from, ranging from small geometrics to larger-scale botanicals, this is a great style choice for any room.

These distinctive pattern carpets can add an element of style to any room in your home

Cable: Great Underfoot But Choose Wisely

Cable style carpet is manufactured of thicker yarn characterized by a longer pile height.

This style is very comfortable underfoot and beautiful in a bedroom or living room.

Much like frieze styles, cable styles can also feature Berber flecking or flecking of neutral color.  This style may also be referred to as a cut-pile Berber.

Remember that this style may be better suited for rooms with less activity.

Because of the longer pile heights, cable style carpets can matte and crush from heavy foot traffic, so it may not be the best choice for hallways, stairs, or other busy areas of your home.

Loop: Durability and Livability = Popularity

A loop style carpet is often referred to as a Berber.

Loop pile carpets are uncut yarns that are either manufactured in a level loop or multi-level loop carpet construction. Loop carpets are highly durable. This is the result of not cutting the yarn tips. This reduces fraying of the ends of the yarn and allows you to see each individual loop.

Loop carpets are ideal for casual, family rooms with high traffic and come in solid colors, Berber fleck, and patterns with varying levels of loops.

This carpet helps minimize traffic patterns, but be advised that this style may make seams more apparent, and its backing is more visible on stairs.

All in all, this is a great all-purpose carpet, a long-lasting performer, and very popular in homes across the country.

Carpet’s Advantages

• Carpet adds warmth and is soft under foot and easier on children’s knees.
• Carpet is much quieter than hard surface floors.
• Carpet comes in a wide variety of colors, tones, and hues.
• Carpet is easy to decorate with and offers many patterns and textures, allowing it to be the focus of the room or the perfect neutral foundation for your furniture and accessories.
• Carpet can be installed in any room in your home, and requires little or no subfloor prep, unlike many hard surface installations.
• Carpet is an excellent value.