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How Do I Choose the Best Plush Carpeting?

Lori Kilchermann
Lori Kilchermann

You can be certain that you have chosen the best plush carpeting if you examine a few critical features of your prospective carpeting selection. The best plush carpeting will have an even pile height and a uniform color consistency throughout the entire carpeting. Another key feature of the best plush carpeting is a high face-weight. As a rule, the higher the face-weight of your carpeting, the longer it will last and the better it will stand up to foot traffic.

Plush carpeting typically shows all footprints and vacuum tracks, thus color choice is critical in selecting the best carpeting for your needs. You might want to select a color that aids in hiding any tracks in the high pile. Neutral and earth colors will typically offer the best hiding characteristics in plush carpeting. You also may want to choose a carpeting that appears to be trimmed evenly, as some lesser-quality plush rugs have minor flaws in the pile height that appear as flaws in the carpet when laid in your room. Color consistency is another critical feature in separating a good carpet from the best carpeting.

Color consistency is one quality to look for when buying plush carpeting.
Color consistency is one quality to look for when buying plush carpeting.

Occasionally, some of the lesser-quality carpets suffer from uneven dying, from the top of the pile to the base of the strands. These carpets will show as light streaks when you run your hand across the pile. Uniform color is a sure sign that you have selected the best plush carpeting. The type of material that your carpet fibers are made of is another indicator of quality carpeting. While nylon fibers typically offer the best durability and strength when compared to polyester and wool, the nylon carpet requires treatment for stain protection as the nylon offers no stain protection on its own.

Wool fibers are commonly the most expensive of all carpeting fibers and are not commonly found in the typical home carpeting; however, woven wool carpeting is usually very high-end and can be a good choice for your flooring needs. Face-weight refers to the weight of the fibers on the face of the carpet. You can be assured of a quality plush carpeting by selecting the highest face-weight carpeting you can afford. The high numbers represent longer-lasting carpeting with a durable construction method. You must, however, make certain that the face-weight is not representing the total weight of the carpeting since some vendors may offer the total weight of the carpet, complete with backing, as a face-weight to represent the plush carpeting as a better quality floor covering than it actually is.

Discussion Comments

lighth0se33

When I was picking out plush carpet tiles for my den, I checked all the loops to make sure that none of them were coming unraveled. I've had problems with this in my old carpet rolls, so it's something I always check for.

I prefer carpet tiles, because if one section gets stained or starts to fray, you can just replace that one piece. It seems like it's much cheaper this way.

kylee07drg

@StarJo – Wool is royalty among the various carpet types, and it demands to be treated as such. You can't use water or ordinary carpet cleaner, because this will make it shrink.

Like you, I was hesitant to choose wool carpeting because it is such a diva, but after a little research, I found out that cleaning it wouldn't be as big a chore as I thought.

Wool has a wax coating, so dirt won't stick to it. You just need to vacuum it a couple of times a week to get the dirt out.

For stains, you can use a foam carpet cleaner, but make sure you buy one that says it is safe for use on wool. This works well for spills.

StarJo

My husband wants to get wool carpet for our house, and though I love the feel and look of it, I'm afraid it will be difficult to clean. I've heard that you can't clean wool with water, so how do you get spills and dirt out before they leave stains?

I know there are companies that specialize in plush carpet cleaning, but we will be spending so much on the carpet itself that I can't imagine paying to have it cleaned. I want to know how to do this myself.

Oceana

That's pretty sneaky that some companies try to hide the face-weight by passing off the total weight as such. I like plush carpet styles, but I have never gone by face-weight when trying to choose one.

Instead, I go by uniformity of color and evenness of height. I believe that you can totally tell when carpet is high quality by examining these two features.

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    • Color consistency is one quality to look for when buying plush carpeting.
      By: maigi
      Color consistency is one quality to look for when buying plush carpeting.