A Guide to Buying High Traffic Areas Carpet

The right kind of carpet should be bought for the right areas in your home. In other words, carpet in the main hallway should have a different durability than carpet in a dining room used only for guests. The point is that there should be more durable carpet in the high traffic areas of your home. So how do you choose and buy the right carpet for certain high traffic areas?

The first thing you need to do is identify the high traffic areas. These areas will probably be the family room, hallways, stairways, and the entrance at your front door. Your going to want to choose a carpet based on its thickness, type, and density. Obviously a better carpet for these areas is the thicker one. You will also need to choose a cushion and pad of the same level of thickness and durability. The carpet types of cut pile cut and loop, and high-level loop need a cushion about 7/16 of an inch thick.

There are other high-traffic areas as well like the kitchen. Yes, people do sometimes put carpet in the kitchen. But here you want something that is not only wear-resistant but stain-resistant too. A good type of carpet for these areas is the poly-propylene or the indoor and outdoor type.

Nylon carpet is probably the most popular for high traffic areas and about 2/3 of all carpet is made of nylon. But for stairs, wool is especially effective because its backing keeps all the wool fibers in place.

For stairs, cut pile is preferable to looped pile. There are other types of durable cut pile carpeting known as frieze or trackless carpet. Trackless carpet is designed so that it hides the footprints formed by people as you might see in other types of thick carpeting. There are some other types of cut pile that while thick, they don’t do very well in high traffic areas. For example, Saxony cut pile carpeting is a level carpet but you will see more tracks. But if the tracks don’t bother you then it is probably okay.

Just because you buy carpet for high traffic areas doesn’t mean the area always needs to have that level of traffic. In a family room for instance, one can rearrange the furniture so that people basically walk a different direction when entering the room. What this does is spread the wear forces more evenly.

Another good thing to do to protect carpet in high traffic areas is to purchase throw rugs of durable material. Then people walk on the rugs and not the carpet. Some people have enough of the scraps from a new carpet left over to make a runner from the carpet for a high traffic area.

Next article: A Guide to Selecting the Right Carpet Cushion/Pad