Carpet diem! That's tweaked-Latin for "carpet day," a day in the life of a home remodeling project that is well worth seizing. Few remodeling milestones are as fun or gratifying as the day wall-to-wall carpeting is rolled out and stretched into place. Within a few hours, a bedroom awakens with color and style, a living room radiates warmth and luxury or a family room grows quiet, cozy and comfortable.
According to The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI), more than 6 out of 10 American homeowners prefer wall-to-wall carpet for those kinds of family spaces. To meet that level of demand, over one billion yards of carpet will be produced this year, enough to run a 12-foot-wide swath around the Earth's equator. Six times.
Why the popularity? Carpet's benefits are obvious: it is comfortable, quiet, warm, relatively affordable and quick to install, available in thousands of colors and styles, and it can unify a home's interior.
Carpeting can also be less durable than other flooring materials, depending on the wear it receives and the material it is made from. It also can be more difficult to keep clean, depending again on the material and the height of the pile.
Carpeting is made of synthetic or wool yarn sewn through a backing of canvas or other material. The loops can be of varying heights and are often cut to make the carpet's pile. Some carpets are a combination of cut and uncut loops.
The most durable and common synthetic carpeting material is nylon, which wears well and can be quite stain resistant. Other synthetic materials are olefin, polyester, and acrylic--the latter, more expensive fiber has a texture more like natural wool and which is more expensive. Wool has the most pleasant and natural texture, and is also the most expensive carpet material.
Carpet can be applied over almost any subfloor or existing flooring—except for old carpet! A thick pile will hide irregularities in subflooring in a way that most other floorings won't.
