How to choose the best carpet for every room in your home (including bedrooms, living rooms and…
By: Brookfield Residential Edmonton
Tags: Home Decor, Interior Design, Home Buying, Flooring, Carpet

Thinking about changing carpet for your current home? How about for a new home? How do you choose the best one for each room? In this episode, we discuss choosing the best carpet for your home including: quality and durability and which carpet is easier to clean. We also explore which carpet makes your home look bigger and how to choose the right colour for each room.

Watch the video:

What we discussed:

Hi, everyone. I’m Karl. Welcome to another Homebuyer’s School video, a channel where you get the latest strategies, tactics, and tips from experts to help you with your home buying journey.

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Today, I’m joined by Rebecca Hotchkiss, Interior Designer with Brookfield Residential, and today we’re going to talk about and answer the question:

How do you choose the best carpet for your home?

Karl Yeh: Rebecca, to start off with, what are the different types of carpet?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

I mean, different types boils down to a lot of things.

You have different materials.

You have different styles. I would say primarily people look at the different styles. That’s what we have here.

So, I mean you can see this would be a quite simple, like a cut pile. This [00:01:00] is a bit of a longer, people may know it as like a shag sort of frieze look.

You have a combination of a cut and a loop and then you have a loop. So that’s one way to describe types of carpet.

And then the next would obviously be materials.

Karl Yeh: So Rebecca,

How would you know if a carpet is good quality?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

It depends on the material. That’s one aspect.

Different materials do come with different warranties.

So good quality could be a 25 year warranty for some people could be a lifetime warranty for other people.

Just depends on what you’re looking at.

Karl Yeh:

So when you install carpet, do they kind [00:01:30] of look darker when you install them then when you see them or do they look the lighter?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

Generally we say they look about one to two shades lighter. So the darkest you’ll see it is in this application right here.

Karl Yeh:

When you’re looking at it from a design point of view, does it matter in terms of where you put the lighter carpet or the darker carpet?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

Generally we tend to use the same carpet throw to home just for consistency, kind of for that flow.

I mean if you did want to do something like a little bit of a more luxurious carpet and maybe an en suite, that could [00:02:00] be an area.

But generally speaking we do the same throughout. So stairs, basements, upstairs, other bedrooms.

Karl Yeh: Okay. So you actually wouldn’t use different types of carpet?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

Not really, no.

We tend to do the same just to keep it, keep it simple. High traffic areas like stairs where you may see a little bit more wear and tear.

We generally prefer to do something a little bit of a like a lower pile.

But if, I mean it’s just stairs to your upstairs, people will keep it all the same.

Some people don’t even have carpeted stairs, so you don’t even have to worry about that because normal wear and tear would be the [00:02:30] same throughout bedrooms, throughout hallways, that kind of thing.

Karl Yeh:

So Rebecca, I think the number one question, which all of us want to know is

What type of carpet is easier to clean?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

It depends on the material.

I mean you’re looking at things like wool, which is great for dirt and then you’re looking at things like nylon, which is great for other staining products.

So depending on the carpet you have, it can be treated differently.

Making maintenance of it easier or harder depending on the material.

Karl Yeh:

Cause I know before we actually started rolling you were talking about the vacuum, I think, marks.

Karl Yeh: [00:03:00] So can you explain how does that work?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

So here you have a bit of a longer pile, so I mean it looks more like that shag.

This is where you see things. So you see vacuum marks, you see footprints. It never will look just perfect.

Something like a little bit more lower to pile like this, it’s got that cut and the loop.

It hides that because it’s so small and so short, you don’t have that movement.

This one again, that loop, even a little bit less, but this is for sure where you see the most vacuum marks

Karl Yeh:

And also want to talk about staining too in [00:03:30] terms of how to get stains out.

Because I know a nephew of mine came over to my house and put like one of those goop stains onto the carpet.

Even no matter how much you vacuum it, you couldn’t, like it was stuck on. Is there like a different type of carpet that could prevent that?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

I mean you can’t prevent everything for sure, but having a man made fiber like a Triexta may be your better solution, it’s probably your most durable, your easiest to clean and they generally have the longest warranty.

Some are 25 years, some are even a lifetime warranty. [00:04:00] So that’s probably your better bet.

Something like a natural material, like a wool, would be a lot harder to clean something like that out of.

Karl Yeh:

When you talk about warranty and I remember in a previous video we talked about carpet replacement and is it true that you actually need your carpets to be professionally cleaned for your warranty to take into effect.

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

It depends on the manufacturer.

We do have some manufacturers that every 18 months you do have to have it professionally cleaned and proof of that in order to [00:04:30] have that lifetime warranty.

And then others just given the nature of the material, they’re confident enough that you don’t need to have that professionally clean.

Just with your normal vacuum cleaner is good enough to have that warranty intact.

Karl Yeh: So Rebecca,

Which type of carpet makes your room look bigger?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

I would do a carpet that’s sort of tone on tone with your walls. That’ll make it feel larger. Your floor will sort of carry up onto the walls and you’ll have like kind of that grand space. Doing a darker carpet, it may create contrast, which some people like. But on the downside it may make your room feel a little bit smaller.

Karl Yeh:

[00:05:00] And if you want to know more about picking the color when painting your interior of your house, check out this video. And as well as I’ll leave it in the description below.

So, in terms of color,

How do you choose the right colour for your rooms and your carpet?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

I mean you just have to look at your palette. If you are going with warm grays, you want to do a warm gray carpet.

Lighting can be a big thing with carpet.

Even with these ones here you can see we have a little bit of a fleck, so a light strand and a dark strand.

So that kind of works to our benefit sometimes when we’re [00:05:30] working with a few different colors within that home, it kind of bridges the gap, which is nice.

Karl Yeh:

And like maybe

For 2019, 2020, what are some of the most popular carpet colours?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

We’re seeing a lot of gray, beige, you know, it’s been popular for a few years, but it is not going anywhere.

It’s a nice warm gray, works with all sorts of different tones within your home.

Karl Yeh:

So Rebecca, do you have anything else to add in terms of carpet selection tips for a new home?

Rebecca Hotchkiss:

I really think it just boils down to looking [00:06:00] at your lifestyle. I mean, different colors suit different lifestyles, different piles suit different lifestyles.

I mean, if you’re doing vacuuming in your home a lot, or if you have kids or pets, you have to look at different factors to figure out what suits you best.

Question of the Day

Karl Yeh:

So the question of the day I have for you is:

What type of carpet do you use for your home? As well as, do you have any additional tips when selecting carpet when moving into a new home?

Let us know in the description below.

If you want to know more about carpets and flooring, check out this playlist here as well as additional [00:06:30] videos on interior design right here. I’ll see you in our next video.

Your turn:

Let us know if you have additional home design or home buying questions that we can answer by submitting them in the comments section below.

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