Carpet knowledge - Colors, Styles, Textures, and Fibers Main styles of carpet.
The two most popular choices of carpet today are the loop pile and cut pile. Loop pile has individual strands of yarn pulled through the backing of the carpet twice, which creates a small loop. Loop pile choices include berber, cable, or sisal. For high traffic areas, loop pile is an excellent choice.
Cut pile constructions can be used in both residential and commercial carpet
installations . The cut pile has the loop cut at the top, leaving tufts of yarn that stand straight up. Cut pile is normally more durable than looped pile. Cut piles come in many styles, such as shag, textured, saxony, and velvet.
There are six basic styles of carpet: textured, saxony or plush, frieze, cable, looped, and cut & loop.
Texture is a very popular cut pile carpet that has alternating twists of yarn, creating a two-tone appearance which helps minimize the appearance of footprints and vacuum marks. This style is appropriate for any room in the home, exudes a casual elegance.
Saxony is a formal, smooth and level cut pile carpet that creates the look of velvet for a luxurious floor. This style of carpeting is perfect for a master bedroom, living or dining room or any elegant environment. Please note, that footprints and vacuum marks are more visible with a Saxony style.
Frieze is a cut pile style of carpet that has a high twist level. Each strand is twisted so tightly it actually curls over at the end. Friezes are hard working and are perfect for the active household.
Cable style carpet is constructed of thicker, typically longer yarn. It’s very comfortable underfoot and beautiful in a bedroom or living room but can matte down in high traffic areas.
A looped style carpet is often referred to as a Berber. Berbers are big, bulky yarns that are produced in a level loop, or multi-level loop construction. They wear well in active areas but seams will be more noticeable.
Cut & Loop is a combination of cut and looped yarns that create pattern effects by the variation in surface textures. Also know as patterned carpet, this style is very popular due to the variety of patterns available today from geometrics and florals to classic pin dots and creative animal patterns.
Carpet Fibers
Natural fiber: wool(common), Banboo fiber, silk, Just(Used mainly in the backing of carpets)
Synthetic fiber: nylon, polypropylene or polyester.
Wool carpeting Most expensive(often twice as much per yard as nylon) and the most durable (30years), rich look, good feel, resistant to combustion and anti-static. Unfortunately, wool tends to "wear down" or the pile tends to wear away. In some cases bald spots may occur as a result heavy traffic loads. Wool is naturally a staple
fiber. Although it is naturally stain resistant, it requires a high level of maintenance including mothproofing.
Wool carpets tend to be made from either British Wool or from New Zealand Wool and each have their own distinct properties. British wools are notoriously tough and hard to beat when wear is a main concern. Whereas, New Zealand wool is better for dyeing lighter shades.
Nylon carpeting (PA-polyamides) Its strengths include good resiliency, good yarn memory to hold twist, good carpet cleaning efficacy, good stain resistance with stain treatment applied, good soil hiding ability, and good abrasion resistance. Nylon is manufactured in both BCF and staple fiber. It is the strongest fiber, making it an excellent choice for the heavy traffic of an active household or commercial facility. It's also the most durable of the synthetics. It is soil and mildew resistant and resilient, but is prone to static. Recommended for high traffic area.
Acrylic carpeting (PP-propene polymer) is very similar to wool, and sometimes referred to as man made wool. Not as hard wearing as nylon and less fire resistant than wool, acrylic can still bring bulk and pile resilience to a carpet. It is resistant to moisture, fading, mildew, crushing, and staining, although it isn't recommended for high traffic areas.
Olefin(Polypropylene) is a low cost carpet material, often used for indoor or outdoor carpeting. Olefin is colorfast and strong, very easy to clean. One of the draw backs to olefin is that it can easily be crushed. Here in hotels we don’t consider it. Polyester produces some of the most beautiful colorations available. It also is extremely fade resistant and provides excellent resistance to stains. However, like olefin, it does have poor resilient properties and thus is susceptible to crushing.
Staple and continuous filament
Each of the fiber systems used in the manufacture of carpet can be divided into two classifications: staple and bulked continuous filament (BCF). Nylon is produced in both staple and BCF yarn. Olefin is typically produced in BCF only. Polyester is manufactured in staple only; cotton and wool are inherently staple. Staple yarns are yarns that are produced in short lengths and spun and twisted together (like cotton) to form long threads of yarn and tufted into carpet. BCF yarns are actually long filaments of fiber that are plied together to form continuous bundles of fiber. Testing
Fiber Burn Testing In using the burn test there are three basic characteristics which must be observed; Flame, Ash, and Odor
Carpet Specifications
The construction of a prospective style of carpet has a major impact on the life expectancy and performance a carpet will provide. Carpet density is the major factor of construction that should be considered. Density is a combination of several factors.
Gauge rate is the distance between tufts (loops) or needles in the widthwise direction. # of needles per:
Stitch rate is the distance between tufts (loops) or the number of times the needle bar strikes in the lengthwise direction. Various styles may be measured differently. Stitches per inch is the most common unit of measurement but stitches per 6 inches may be found frequently.
Pile height is the length of the tuft (loop) from the base of the tuft (primary backing) to the tip of the tuft. Pile height is normally measured as a fraction of an inch or as a decimal equivalent. In China, it is measured in millimeter.
Twist level has recently been identified as a major performance factor in many commercial cut-pile and residential cut-pile constructions. Twist level is measured in twists per inch. A close look at the tufts on a cut-pile product will reveal two bundles of yarn that have been plyed (twisted) together and heatset to "lock-in" the twist. Generally speaking, the more twists per inch, the better the performance.
Density can be defined as the amount of face yarn per unit area. There are several methods used for determining density. The primary method uses a simple empirical formula to quantify density.
Average Pile Density = 36 X Pile Yarn Weight / Pile Height (or pile thickness) in inches
Carpet Dye Methods and Pros
There are, essentially, two classifications of dyeing residential carpet styles: pre-dyed yarns and post dyed yarns. There are numerous methods of pre-dye and post dye. It is not necessary to understand skein dyed, stock dyeing, yarn dyeing, or space dyeing, but it is necessary to understand the differences between pre and post dyeing and the characteristics of each. Post Dyeing
All carpet fiber that is to be post dyed is extruded as “white” fiber or fiber that is extruded without color pigment added (see solution dyeing – extrusion). This white fiber is spun, twisted, heat set and tufted into a blanket. After tufting the blanket, dyeing is performed, generally, in one of three fashions, beck dyeing, continuous dyeing and printing. With heavier products and with polyester fibers, beck dyeing is employed to dye the unbacked blanket also known as greige goods. With this method, the blanket is submerged in a dye bath and the temperature of the dye mixture is raised to open the dye sites of the fiber. The negatively charged dye molecules attach to the positively charged dye sites and the dye adheres to the fiberIn products that have been beck-dyed, there may be an excess of dye left in the fabric after dyeing. In rare cases, when you walk across the finished pile with white socks, there may be some transfer to the socks. Also, when cleaning or extracting some of the dye may be found in the extracted rinse water. Neither of these instances should be cause for concern. The dyes are stable and the fiber is not losing color. The dye transfer is simply excess dyes that did not attach to fiber dye sites. This will occur more frequently in deeper shades such as navy blue, hunter green, or chocolate brown. Continuous dyeing
This is a process in which the tufted blanket dyed on a continuous dye range. This dye method employs spray jets that continuously apply dye to the fiber as the carpet moves underneath. This method of dyeing can produce several hundred feet of dyed carpet per hour and Print dyeing
This is similar to continuous dyeing in that printing is a continuous operation. Print dyeing is used to dye all multicolored prints. These are fabrics in which a floral or printed pattern is applied to the surface of the fiber. Many “kitchen” prints and area rugs are made in this fashion, although a number of high style residential fabrics use this technique as well.
Pre-Dyeing
Pre-Dyeing refers to all dye methods in which the fiber is dyed before it is tufted into a blanket. While there are numerous methods of pre-dyeing, you should primarily be concerned with the most common method found in residential applications – solution dyeing.
Solution dyeing offers a number of advantages and disadvantages to residential carpet
constructions . Since color pigment must be mixed in a solid state to dye the fiber during
extrusion, color choices are much more limited than with post dyed fibers. However, fiber is dyed throughout rather than on the fiber surface only. Visualize a carrot which has color throughout (solution dyed) as compared to a radish (post dyed) where color is only on the outer edges of the fiber . The advantage is that color , which permeates the fiber , is more difficult to remove as a result of bleaching agents, sunlight, and environmental pollutants. Unless your new carpet installation will be exposed to bleaching agents or other factors that initiate color fading, there is little need to specify solution dyed fibers. More importantly, since solution dyed fibers are very limited (with the exception of olefin) in the residential market, selection options will be severely limited.
Chinese Market
All above has described the specifications of choosing a carpet, but in the Chinese market all the details are not professional and standard. Here is some information that you need to know before meeting a chinese carpet supplier.
The main styles of the carpets are named after the woven machine: Axminter Carpet and Wilton carpet.
Axminter Carpet is synonymous with quality and luxury, and all authentic Axminster carpets are still woven using natural materials and traditional methods. The special point is that it uses Jute ‘weft’ which is passed between alternate parallel cotton ‘warps’. The quality of the carpet is determined by the number of tufts per square inch, the count or weight of the yarn and the length of pile. The color is retricted to 12.
Wilton carpet, like Axminster TM carpet, is woven. However the difference between the two methods is the way in which the carpet is woven. Whereas the Axminster TM yarn is cut into tufts and then held in place by the weft, the Wilton carpet yarn is a continuous strand woven all the way through.
The state of the art Wilton looms at Axminster use a maximum of five colours, producing cut or loop pile textured carpet. It is the preferred flooring for some
commercial installations and most transportation applications as it is hugely stable and extremely hard wearing.
Tufted carpet is the most economical of the carpet producing methods. Unlike
Axminster and Wilton carpet, this method is an extremely fast (one roll of Axminster might take 8 hours to make whereas one roll of tufted takes approx 1 hr) way of manufacturing carpet. While it is true that a tufted carpet is not a woven carpet, But it is not of good quality compared with the first two.
Hand Knotted carpets are also claimed by some of the suppliers. It is the best of all the types of carpets in terms of quality, various colors, resiliency, thickness,
resistance to stains and water and also flammability. It can pass the detection easily and provides higher standard. But the problem is that it is comparatively expensive and less efficient. The delay may be one and a half month. Hotel carpets recommended:
● 100% wool; Hand Knotted carpets ● 80/20 wool/nylon; Axminter Carpet
● 100% nylon; Axminter Carpet /Wilton carpet Gauge rate: 1/10 Pile height: 5-10mm Service life: 5-25 years Other Information:
1. For the hand knotted carpets, you can cut patterns on the surface, so that there
will be layers and subtle lighting effects, royale appearance.
2. When we go to see suppliers, we cannot say that we represent the hotel part,
we say we are Artdecoration firms. They will offer lower prices to these firms. 3. As I have contacted some companies, some big companies have factories in
other provinces and an office in Shanghai. We can go and visit the near ones. 4. I am not sure if lasuiteroyale can export or not. If not, I find it is better to contact
those big companies who had experience in exporting.
5. The best way to compare carpets of different companies is to ask for samples.
First, we give our pattern and other requirements like composition, pile height, and other standard. Second, we choose some factories to make a small piece of samples that we want to put in the hallway of the hotel. Third, we compare the quality and price. Decide the supplier in the end and sign the contract. (Normally, the samples are all done perfectly. We should also audit the carpet when they are producing.)
Carpet knowledge - Colors, Styles, Textures, and Fibers Main styles of carpet.
The two most popular choices of carpet today are the loop pile and cut pile. Loop pile has individual strands of yarn pulled through the backing of the carpet twice, which creates a small loop. Loop pile choices include berber, cable, or sisal. For high traffic areas, loop pile is an excellent choice.
Cut pile constructions can be used in both residential and commercial carpet
installations . The cut pile has the loop cut at the top, leaving tufts of yarn that stand straight up. Cut pile is normally more durable than looped pile. Cut piles come in many styles, such as shag, textured, saxony, and velvet.
There are six basic styles of carpet: textured, saxony or plush, frieze, cable, looped, and cut & loop.
Texture is a very popular cut pile carpet that has alternating twists of yarn, creating a two-tone appearance which helps minimize the appearance of footprints and vacuum marks. This style is appropriate for any room in the home, exudes a casual elegance.
Saxony is a formal, smooth and level cut pile carpet that creates the look of velvet for a luxurious floor. This style of carpeting is perfect for a master bedroom, living or dining room or any elegant environment. Please note, that footprints and vacuum marks are more visible with a Saxony style.
Frieze is a cut pile style of carpet that has a high twist level. Each strand is twisted so tightly it actually curls over at the end. Friezes are hard working and are perfect for the active household.
Cable style carpet is constructed of thicker, typically longer yarn. It’s very comfortable underfoot and beautiful in a bedroom or living room but can matte down in high traffic areas.
A looped style carpet is often referred to as a Berber. Berbers are big, bulky yarns that are produced in a level loop, or multi-level loop construction. They wear well in active areas but seams will be more noticeable.
Cut & Loop is a combination of cut and looped yarns that create pattern effects by the variation in surface textures. Also know as patterned carpet, this style is very popular due to the variety of patterns available today from geometrics and florals to classic pin dots and creative animal patterns.
Carpet Fibers
Natural fiber: wool(common), Banboo fiber, silk, Just(Used mainly in the backing of carpets)
Synthetic fiber: nylon, polypropylene or polyester.
Wool carpeting Most expensive(often twice as much per yard as nylon) and the most durable (30years), rich look, good feel, resistant to combustion and anti-static. Unfortunately, wool tends to "wear down" or the pile tends to wear away. In some cases bald spots may occur as a result heavy traffic loads. Wool is naturally a staple
fiber. Although it is naturally stain resistant, it requires a high level of maintenance including mothproofing.
Wool carpets tend to be made from either British Wool or from New Zealand Wool and each have their own distinct properties. British wools are notoriously tough and hard to beat when wear is a main concern. Whereas, New Zealand wool is better for dyeing lighter shades.
Nylon carpeting (PA-polyamides) Its strengths include good resiliency, good yarn memory to hold twist, good carpet cleaning efficacy, good stain resistance with stain treatment applied, good soil hiding ability, and good abrasion resistance. Nylon is manufactured in both BCF and staple fiber. It is the strongest fiber, making it an excellent choice for the heavy traffic of an active household or commercial facility. It's also the most durable of the synthetics. It is soil and mildew resistant and resilient, but is prone to static. Recommended for high traffic area.
Acrylic carpeting (PP-propene polymer) is very similar to wool, and sometimes referred to as man made wool. Not as hard wearing as nylon and less fire resistant than wool, acrylic can still bring bulk and pile resilience to a carpet. It is resistant to moisture, fading, mildew, crushing, and staining, although it isn't recommended for high traffic areas.
Olefin(Polypropylene) is a low cost carpet material, often used for indoor or outdoor carpeting. Olefin is colorfast and strong, very easy to clean. One of the draw backs to olefin is that it can easily be crushed. Here in hotels we don’t consider it. Polyester produces some of the most beautiful colorations available. It also is extremely fade resistant and provides excellent resistance to stains. However, like olefin, it does have poor resilient properties and thus is susceptible to crushing.
Staple and continuous filament
Each of the fiber systems used in the manufacture of carpet can be divided into two classifications: staple and bulked continuous filament (BCF). Nylon is produced in both staple and BCF yarn. Olefin is typically produced in BCF only. Polyester is manufactured in staple only; cotton and wool are inherently staple. Staple yarns are yarns that are produced in short lengths and spun and twisted together (like cotton) to form long threads of yarn and tufted into carpet. BCF yarns are actually long filaments of fiber that are plied together to form continuous bundles of fiber. Testing
Fiber Burn Testing In using the burn test there are three basic characteristics which must be observed; Flame, Ash, and Odor
Carpet Specifications
The construction of a prospective style of carpet has a major impact on the life expectancy and performance a carpet will provide. Carpet density is the major factor of construction that should be considered. Density is a combination of several factors.
Gauge rate is the distance between tufts (loops) or needles in the widthwise direction. # of needles per:
Stitch rate is the distance between tufts (loops) or the number of times the needle bar strikes in the lengthwise direction. Various styles may be measured differently. Stitches per inch is the most common unit of measurement but stitches per 6 inches may be found frequently.
Pile height is the length of the tuft (loop) from the base of the tuft (primary backing) to the tip of the tuft. Pile height is normally measured as a fraction of an inch or as a decimal equivalent. In China, it is measured in millimeter.
Twist level has recently been identified as a major performance factor in many commercial cut-pile and residential cut-pile constructions. Twist level is measured in twists per inch. A close look at the tufts on a cut-pile product will reveal two bundles of yarn that have been plyed (twisted) together and heatset to "lock-in" the twist. Generally speaking, the more twists per inch, the better the performance.
Density can be defined as the amount of face yarn per unit area. There are several methods used for determining density. The primary method uses a simple empirical formula to quantify density.
Average Pile Density = 36 X Pile Yarn Weight / Pile Height (or pile thickness) in inches
Carpet Dye Methods and Pros
There are, essentially, two classifications of dyeing residential carpet styles: pre-dyed yarns and post dyed yarns. There are numerous methods of pre-dye and post dye. It is not necessary to understand skein dyed, stock dyeing, yarn dyeing, or space dyeing, but it is necessary to understand the differences between pre and post dyeing and the characteristics of each. Post Dyeing
All carpet fiber that is to be post dyed is extruded as “white” fiber or fiber that is extruded without color pigment added (see solution dyeing – extrusion). This white fiber is spun, twisted, heat set and tufted into a blanket. After tufting the blanket, dyeing is performed, generally, in one of three fashions, beck dyeing, continuous dyeing and printing. With heavier products and with polyester fibers, beck dyeing is employed to dye the unbacked blanket also known as greige goods. With this method, the blanket is submerged in a dye bath and the temperature of the dye mixture is raised to open the dye sites of the fiber. The negatively charged dye molecules attach to the positively charged dye sites and the dye adheres to the fiberIn products that have been beck-dyed, there may be an excess of dye left in the fabric after dyeing. In rare cases, when you walk across the finished pile with white socks, there may be some transfer to the socks. Also, when cleaning or extracting some of the dye may be found in the extracted rinse water. Neither of these instances should be cause for concern. The dyes are stable and the fiber is not losing color. The dye transfer is simply excess dyes that did not attach to fiber dye sites. This will occur more frequently in deeper shades such as navy blue, hunter green, or chocolate brown. Continuous dyeing
This is a process in which the tufted blanket dyed on a continuous dye range. This dye method employs spray jets that continuously apply dye to the fiber as the carpet moves underneath. This method of dyeing can produce several hundred feet of dyed carpet per hour and Print dyeing
This is similar to continuous dyeing in that printing is a continuous operation. Print dyeing is used to dye all multicolored prints. These are fabrics in which a floral or printed pattern is applied to the surface of the fiber. Many “kitchen” prints and area rugs are made in this fashion, although a number of high style residential fabrics use this technique as well.
Pre-Dyeing
Pre-Dyeing refers to all dye methods in which the fiber is dyed before it is tufted into a blanket. While there are numerous methods of pre-dyeing, you should primarily be concerned with the most common method found in residential applications – solution dyeing.
Solution dyeing offers a number of advantages and disadvantages to residential carpet
constructions . Since color pigment must be mixed in a solid state to dye the fiber during
extrusion, color choices are much more limited than with post dyed fibers. However, fiber is dyed throughout rather than on the fiber surface only. Visualize a carrot which has color throughout (solution dyed) as compared to a radish (post dyed) where color is only on the outer edges of the fiber . The advantage is that color , which permeates the fiber , is more difficult to remove as a result of bleaching agents, sunlight, and environmental pollutants. Unless your new carpet installation will be exposed to bleaching agents or other factors that initiate color fading, there is little need to specify solution dyed fibers. More importantly, since solution dyed fibers are very limited (with the exception of olefin) in the residential market, selection options will be severely limited.
Chinese Market
All above has described the specifications of choosing a carpet, but in the Chinese market all the details are not professional and standard. Here is some information that you need to know before meeting a chinese carpet supplier.
The main styles of the carpets are named after the woven machine: Axminter Carpet and Wilton carpet.
Axminter Carpet is synonymous with quality and luxury, and all authentic Axminster carpets are still woven using natural materials and traditional methods. The special point is that it uses Jute ‘weft’ which is passed between alternate parallel cotton ‘warps’. The quality of the carpet is determined by the number of tufts per square inch, the count or weight of the yarn and the length of pile. The color is retricted to 12.
Wilton carpet, like Axminster TM carpet, is woven. However the difference between the two methods is the way in which the carpet is woven. Whereas the Axminster TM yarn is cut into tufts and then held in place by the weft, the Wilton carpet yarn is a continuous strand woven all the way through.
The state of the art Wilton looms at Axminster use a maximum of five colours, producing cut or loop pile textured carpet. It is the preferred flooring for some
commercial installations and most transportation applications as it is hugely stable and extremely hard wearing.
Tufted carpet is the most economical of the carpet producing methods. Unlike
Axminster and Wilton carpet, this method is an extremely fast (one roll of Axminster might take 8 hours to make whereas one roll of tufted takes approx 1 hr) way of manufacturing carpet. While it is true that a tufted carpet is not a woven carpet, But it is not of good quality compared with the first two.
Hand Knotted carpets are also claimed by some of the suppliers. It is the best of all the types of carpets in terms of quality, various colors, resiliency, thickness,
resistance to stains and water and also flammability. It can pass the detection easily and provides higher standard. But the problem is that it is comparatively expensive and less efficient. The delay may be one and a half month. Hotel carpets recommended:
● 100% wool; Hand Knotted carpets ● 80/20 wool/nylon; Axminter Carpet
● 100% nylon; Axminter Carpet /Wilton carpet Gauge rate: 1/10 Pile height: 5-10mm Service life: 5-25 years Other Information:
1. For the hand knotted carpets, you can cut patterns on the surface, so that there
will be layers and subtle lighting effects, royale appearance.
2. When we go to see suppliers, we cannot say that we represent the hotel part,
we say we are Artdecoration firms. They will offer lower prices to these firms. 3. As I have contacted some companies, some big companies have factories in
other provinces and an office in Shanghai. We can go and visit the near ones. 4. I am not sure if lasuiteroyale can export or not. If not, I find it is better to contact
those big companies who had experience in exporting.
5. The best way to compare carpets of different companies is to ask for samples.
First, we give our pattern and other requirements like composition, pile height, and other standard. Second, we choose some factories to make a small piece of samples that we want to put in the hallway of the hotel. Third, we compare the quality and price. Decide the supplier in the end and sign the contract. (Normally, the samples are all done perfectly. We should also audit the carpet when they are producing.)