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Carpet 101

Everything you need to know about carpet before you buy

Making the right decision can be challenging. Interpreting your lifestyle and how you live in your home are key to making the perfect choice for your flooring. Your floors get a lot of wear and tear from pets, guests and family of all ages – your carpet literally gets walked over every day. Choosing a carpet that can wear well and maintain its beauty for years to come is something to always take into consideration. Stanton provides you with luxury solutions to meet and exceed your expectations across a variety of different constructions and qualities.

Below is an explanation of the various fiber choices and construction types that are available through Stanton and its family of Brands:

Fiber Types

Wool (wool has been the standard in floor covering for centuries)

  • Naturally resilient helping to resist crushing and matting
  • Great for family spaces, bedrooms, stairs, and other high-traffic areas
  • Inherently stain resistant making topical stain protection unnecessary
  • It is hypo-allergenic
  • Naturally flame retardant
  • Acts as a natural humidifier and can hold 30% of its weight in moisture
  • Biodegradable and renewable

 

Polysilk (Polyester)

  • Lustrous appearance
  • Great silk alternative
  • High level of stain resistance
  • “Closed-cell” fiber with no dye sites for stains to adhere
  • Eco-Friendly – Often manufactured from PET (plastic water bottles)
  • Enhanced fiber content has improved durability nearly rivaling nylon
  • ”Family-friendly” fiber
  • Only the densest constructions for stair application

 

Viscose (Decorative fiber low traffic, limited use)

  • Developed in the early/mid 19th century to offer an affordable alternative to silk and emulate its characteristics (Rayon)
  • Cellulose-based fiber
  • Usually from bamboo or cotton
  • Lustrous, soft, and luxurious finish
  • Hollow-core fiber
  • Does not react well with liquid spills
  • Changes the character of the yarn and can’t recover
  • Dry-clean only

 

Blended Fibers (Wool / Viscose, Wool / Tencel, Wool / Nylon, Wool / Polysilk, Nylon / Tencel “Tenlon”)

  • Used to enhance delicate fiber performance, especially when blended with wool.
  • Can improve wear and cleanability
  • Wool/Viscose, Wool/Tencel – The wool benefits from the sheen and softness
  • characteristics while the viscose and Tencel benefit from the strength and performance characteristics of the wool
  • Wool/Nylon – the nylon enhances the strength of the wool
  • “Intimate Blends” – The fiber types are first tumbled together, spun into yarn, and then woven into carpet

 

Nylon (Family-friendly use anywhere fiber)

  • Has superb resiliency
  • Most durable of all synthetic fibers
  • Inherent anti-microbial properties
  • Resistant to moisture
  • Good cleanability
  • Good texture retention

 

Polypropylene (Royaltron)

  • Hydrophobic fiber – does not absorb moisture
  • Long-lasting and durable fiber
  • Anti-microbial
  • Anti-static
  • Solution Dyed for exceptional color retention and cleanability

 

Tencel (Decorative “Adult” fiber)

  • Enhanced fiber more durable than viscose
  • Soft and luxurious finish
  • Manufactured from eucalyptus
  • Closed-loop production / Eco-friendly
  • Water management properties
  • Will not change the character of the yarn if it gets wet
  • Solid core fiber
  • Dry-clean only

 

Construction Types

Machine Tufted Construction

  • Needles stitch hundreds of rows of pile yarn through a primary backing
  • A loop holds the yarn in place to form a tuft as the needle is removed
  • Can create either loop or cut-pile finish
  • The fastest method of carpet production
  • Easiest construction to install

 

Face to Face Wilton

  • Traditionally creates a cut-pile finish only
  • The carpets are woven as a “sandwich” and split into two rolls (genders) at the end of production
  • Exceptionally durable and dimensionally stable
  • Differs from wire-Wilton production in that all the yarn is utilized and not buried in the backing style

 

Woven Hand-Loomed

  • Essentially a manual version of machine wire-Wilton carpet weaving
  • Yarn is woven over a series of metal rods
  • The loop is kept intact for loop finishes and cut over the top of the rods for cut-pile finishes
  • Can also create cut and loop textures
  • Allows for creating a variety of textures that cannot be achieved on conventional weaving or tufting machines
  • Widths up to 16’3”

 

Woven Wire Wilton

  • Oldest method of carpet manufacturing
  • Originated in Wilton, England
  • Pile is created by weaving yarns around a series of wires across the width of the carpet
  • Loop pile is created by extracting the wires leaving the loop intact
  • Cut pile is created by extracting wires with cutting blades at one end
  • It is also possible to create a combination of cut and loop pile with this method

Machine Flatweave

  • Does not have any backing
  • The warp (length) and weft (width) yarns comprise the entire foundation of the carpet
  • Produces low-profile finish
  • Exceptional durability

 

Hand-Tufted

  • Same basic concept as machine tufting
  • Yarns are ”punched” through a primary backing using a handheld tufting gun
  • Oftentimes patterns are printed on the primary backing to guide the tufting
  • process
  • Latex is applied to the back of the primary and a secondary backing is applied to lock the yarns in place
  • A cosmetic “scrim” is usually applied to conceal the salvage yarns and provide added dimensional stability