Carpet

Carpet

People buy carpet on how it feels in the showroom and then judge it three years later on how the hallway looks. What happens between those two moments comes down to fiber, to twist and density, and to the pad nobody thinks to ask about. Those are the three things worth spending your attention on.

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Fiber first

What each carpet fiber actually survives

Nylon springs back where other fibers stay flat

Nylon is the most resilient of the common fibers. Resilience is the ability of a crushed pile to stand back up, and nylon does it better than anything else you are likely to be shown. It also responds to hot water extraction, so it can be genuinely cleaned rather than surface-treated.

Untreated nylon takes a stain, so it is nearly always sold with stain protection. Solution-dyed nylon has the color locked into the fiber itself, which means a diluted bleach solution kills a stain without leaving a pale patch behind.

Polyester resists stains but never recovers

Polyester repels water-based spills on its own because the fiber is hydrophobic, so the resistance is not a coating that wears off. It takes deep color and it feels soft. What it does not do is recover. In a hallway or in front of a sofa it crushes flat and stays that way, which is why a carpet can look worn out long before it is worn through.

Triexta sits between the two, with inherent stain resistance like polyester and resilience much closer to nylon.

Olefin grays in the walkways instead of staining

Olefin resists fading and bleach, which is why it turns up in loop berbers, but it pulls oily soil off shoes and holds onto it, so it grays in the walkways rather than staining in spots. Wool is durable and naturally flame resistant, and it stays a specialty order.

What's included

Nylon, triexta, polyester and olefin fibers
Solution-dyed fiber for bleach-cleanable stain removal
Pad specified by density rather than thickness
Moisture-barrier pad for pet households
Power-stretched installation over tackless strip
Seam placement planned around light and traffic
Cap-and-band or waterfall stair upholstery
Pattern-matched broadloom and stair runners

Room by room

Bedrooms, stairs and the pet question

Upstairs carpet quiets the room below it

In the two-story houses going up across Forney and Rockwall County, carpet upstairs does acoustic work as well as comfort work, absorbing footfall instead of transmitting it through the framing into the living room ceiling. Bedrooms are also low-traffic rooms, and that is exactly where a softer, less resilient fiber becomes a legitimate choice rather than a compromise.

Stairs take every step in the same three inches

Stairs are the hardest-worn surface in any house. Every foot lands in the same three inches of every tread, so stairs deserve the most durable fiber and the tightest twist in the house even if that means a different carpet from the bedrooms they connect.

A cap-and-band installation wraps tread and riser band separately and looks tailored, while a waterfall carries the carpet over the nose in one sheet and is simpler. Either way it has to be pulled tight and fastened at every tread.

Odor lives in the pad, not in the carpet

Pets and allergies deserve honest answers. Carpet holds allergens out of the air, which helps if you vacuum weekly with a sealed HEPA machine and works against you if you do not, and a low, dense pile gives up what it traps far more readily than a long shag.

Pet accidents, meanwhile, are usually not a carpet problem at all. Urine passes through the backing into the pad and from there into the slab, and that is where the odor lives long after the carpet has been cleaned.

Underneath

Pad, stretch and seams: the invisible half

Pad is specified by density, not by plushness

The pad is where people economize and it is the wrong place for it. Pad is specified by density in pounds per cubic foot, not by how plush it feels in your hand. A thick, soft, low-density pad lets the carpet backing flex under every step, and that flexing breaks the backing down and wears the carpet out from below while the face still looks new.

Most residential cut pile wants around seven sixteenths of an inch at six to eight pounds, and plenty of manufacturers will decline a warranty claim over a pad softer or thicker than their specification.

Power stretching is what prevents summer ripples

Carpet is installed over tackless strip around the perimeter and pulled tight with a power stretcher, not a knee kicker. In a climate that swings from thirty percent humidity one week to seventy the next, an under-stretched carpet is the one that grows a ripple across the hallway by its second summer, and fixing it later means emptying the room all over again.

Seams follow the light and stay out of the path

Seams get planned rather than left to chance. Broadloom comes in a fixed width, so any room wider than the roll will have at least one. A seam should run in the same direction as the main light source rather than across it, sit out of the main walking path, and never land on a stair or in a doorway pivot.

Patterned carpet has to be matched across the seam, which means extra material for the repeat, settled at measure instead of discovered mid-install. All of it carries our one-year labor warranty, and the crew doing the work is the same crew every time.

Reviews

What homeowners say

"All About Floors is amazing to work with! We recently had our entire flooring replaced and they not only did a wonderful job, the support and aftercare has been top notch! Highly recommend"
J Shoe2 · via Google
"The team at All About Floors did an absolutely phenomenal job repairing a portion of a floor in my clients' home that nobody else would touch. We are so grateful for Patty and her amazing team!"
Carley Newlin · via Google

Carpet

Carpet questions

Face weight or density: which number tells me a carpet will last?

Density, together with the twist of the yarn. Face weight only counts the ounces of fiber in a square yard, and a mill can hit a high number with loosely twisted yarn that mats down quickly. Bend a sample backward: if the backing shows easily through the pile, it is not dense. Tightly twisted tips that hold their shape are the best predictor of a carpet that still looks right in year five.

What is the best carpet for a house with dogs?

A solution-dyed fiber over a moisture-barrier pad, in a low, dense cut pile. Solution-dyed means the color runs through the fiber, so an accident can be cleaned aggressively without bleaching a pale spot into the floor. The barrier pad stops liquid reaching the slab, which is what causes odor that never quite leaves. Avoid loops if you have cats, since a claw catches a loop and pulls a run across the room.

Can we keep the existing pad and just replace the carpet?

We advise against it, and most manufacturers will not warranty it. Old pad has already been compressed in exactly the pathways you walk and has absorbed whatever was spilled over the years, and new carpet laid on a pad that has lost its density starts wearing from underneath immediately. New pad goes down with new carpet as a matter of course.

Why has our carpet developed ripples across the hallway?

Almost always because it was never power stretched properly. Carpet backing relaxes with heat and humidity, and North Texas supplies plenty of both, so a carpet that was merely kicked into place will loosen and buckle within a couple of seasons. It can be re-stretched by lifting the edges, pulling it tight and re-trimming, but doing it right the first time saves emptying the room twice.

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