Getting the Best From Your Carpet

Quality

The first essential in ensuring that a carpet will perform well over many years is to select the right material for the job. Too often the carpet is selected only on price rather than quality. The famous nineteenth century writer John Ruskin summed it up well:

'It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, all you lose is the additional money - that is all. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because what you bought was incapable of doing well, the thing it was bought to do.'

The common law of business prohibits paying a little, and getting a lot - it can't be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is as well to add something for the risk you run: and if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.'

We offer a set of information sheets that will help you to make your selection armed with the latest information. These will help you to avoid the most obvious pitfalls.

Underlay

Underlay is a vital part of the carpet installation. Buy the best you can afford. An extra pound spent on underlay will usually make far more difference to the useful life of a carpet, than several additional pounds spent on the carpet itself. Soft underlays are fine for bedrooms, but for heavily used areas a hard, resilient underlay is better. Best of all, although expensive, is the hard rubber/wool felt combination underlay. This is made for use in hotels, but it is also the best possible choice for home.

Fitting

First-class fitting makes a huge difference to the appearance and life span of a carpet. There are very few properly trained carpet fitters. We never use 'cowboy' fitters, although, unbelievably, they seem to be able to find carpet fitting employment elsewhere!

Planning

Where-ever possible, we plan carpets out of a single width. This allows us to reduce seams, and incorporate waste from one area into another - perhaps stairs. Unlike some retailers, we do not set seams at 90° or 180°. Many planners resort to this for the short-term advantage of reducing the material required (and therefore the quotation). The real price for this is ultimately paid by the consumer, who finds that the carpet seams soon begin to show, and the pile reverses (giving an ugly 'stained' appearance). On stairs, carpets laid in the wrong direction wear out very quickly.

Stain Resistance

There have been many treatments that have claimed to stain-proof a carpet. We have never found these products to be very effective in the long term. In our opinion, Intec® is by far the best product for the job. We recommend it for all living areas, and for all light-coloured carpets. When all-else fails, the Service Master company offer an excellent cleaning and spotting service. For irredeemable disasters you may have to resort to your insurers.

Grit Problems

We all tread-in grit on our shoes. It is desperately destructive stuff, with cutting edges that cut carpet fibres at the base of the pile. The first line of defence is a big door mat that is beaten regularly. The second line of resistance is regular vac