Choosing Carpet Styles and Textures
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You can liven up a room or make an area more intimate simply by installing a carpet that suits your style. Like curtains or window treatments, carpets can set the mood of any area depending on its colour and texture.
Once you have decided to get a carpet, you should go out and examine the carpets available in showrooms and home stores. Ask for swatches of the material you like and see how each of these can look together with the furniture and walls of your room.
Carpets come in many materials, styles, designs, colours and textures. When choosing a carpet, you should consider not only your budget, but also the level of foot traffic and decorating theme of the area to be carpeted.
Carpet Materials
Nylon is a popular choice of a material because it is inexpensive, durable, and resilient. Nylon, however, is prone to static and can easily attract dust and dirt. Wool is also a durable and resilient material but is more expensive and difficult to clean. Acrylic and polyester fibers may pill and look fuzzy after some wear and should be used in areas with little foot traffic.
Carpet Types
The softness of a carpet depends on how the yarn is cut and woven. In a loop carpet, the exposed yarn is looped and not cut making it less likely to show marks from vacuuming and walking. Loops are ideal for high-traffic areas. A cut and loop carpet has cut yarn interspersed with loops in different heights making it softer than the loop type. This is best used for bedrooms and areas of your home that are seldom used.
The Saxony type has twisted and softened yarn, making the carpet durable yet comfortable, and is a popular choice for high traffic areas like office floors. For family rooms, consider a cable type that is made up of thick, twisted yarn that feels soft underfoot.
Formal function rooms look best in high maintenance velvet carpet because of its elegant shimmer. Velvet, however, is not very forgiving as it can make tracks and other marks visible. A velvet carpet in a design helps minimise the appearance of tracks.
Plush carpets have cut yarns in equal heights for an even appearance. This makes vacuum and foot tracks highly visible so that it is best used in areas that are seldom used.
Carpet Colours
Very dark carpet colours like navy blue, black, and dark brown may make a room seem smaller and tend to expose light coloured stains and dust. On the other hand, very light shades like white and off-white can make a small room seem larger but these colours are easily soiled. It is best to get a carpet in multiple shades like a speckled or tweed pattern to make dust, soil and stains less obvious.
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