The flooring space is absolutely chocka with different products and offerings. We first started with a layman’s approach of looking at finishes and colours, thinking that was where our energy was best spent.
We quickly learned that there are multiple types of carpet and flooring, and we would be best to decide on the type we’d go for first, and choose our colours from there.
This involved consulting with a range of retailers and outlets.
Carpet
Piles are the individual strands of thread that form the carpet. There are three main pile types:
- Cut pile
- Loop pile
- Combination cut and loop pile
And there are three common carpet materials:
- Wool
- Wool blends
- Synthetic
Each combination has different properties and resistance to wear, staining and fading, but also feel and colour choice.
Rather than exhaust the options here, Consumer has a great article on carpet properties worth reading.
Flooring
Flooring is even more daunting than carpet!
Manufacturers are using a vast range of different raw materials and processing techniques to come up with offerings that all tout different benefits and attempt to outshine each other.
The basic choices fall into the following groups:
- Natural timber
- Engineered timber
- Bamboo
- Laminate
- Hybrid
- Vinyl plank
- Linoleum
- Tiles
- Polished concrete
- Sheet vinyl
Each choice has varying product and installation costs, aesthetic options as well as durability.
The fact that we were laying over a timber floor, as well as our budget made some options more or less attractive.
By this stage, we were feeling quite overwhelmed and felt it was time to begin consulting with some specialists!