Why Choose Wool Carpet?
Winter time is fast approaching and the decision that you’ve been putting off for far too long needs to be made. What are you going to do about that old smelly carpet that you keep telling yourself you’ll replace year after year? The current trend seems to point towards hard flooring. Marble, tile, wood, and just about every other type of hard flooring you can imagine has gained a tremendous rise in popularity over the last few years. People see it in model homes and simply must have it. But hard flooring is well, hard! Hard flooring is not only hard, it’s cold! Of course you can cover your house with rugs but then why have something nice like marble installed in the first place if you’re just going to cover it up!
One very nice alternative to hard flooring is wool carpet. Wool is a natural fiber and is one of the softest, most durable carpet materials available today. Instead of jumping off your bed in the middle of the night only to be shocked into wakefulness when your feet hit the stone cold floor, imagine your feet touching down softly upon nice warm loops of wool berber…
Wool comes in a variety of styles and colors. Most often wool is manufactured as a berber or cut loop carpet. Occasionally you can find varieties of very short, densely packed cut pile wool carpet available. Wool carpet also comes in a variety of patterns and colors. If you’re considering purchasing a berber, wool is a very good choice. Wool will last longer than almost any other carpet material.
Keep in mind that while wool is both soft and very durable, it is not as stain resistant as nylon. Wool may not be a good choice if you have young children or indoor pets. A friend of mine once purchased wool carpet and to her horror came home one day to encounter a long trail of grape juice leading from the kitchen to her son’s room. She never was able to fully remove the stain.
There are a couple other items that you should be aware of before purchasing wool carpet. Firstly, it is a very good conductor of static electricity so it’s probably not the best choice if you build computers for a living and store them in your home. Secondly, dye lot variations are a bit more common with wool carpet. A dye lot variation is when carpet color varies from batch to batch. Because wool is a natural product its color will vary somewhat. This means that the carpet that arrives at your home for install may be slightly lighter or darker than the sample you chose at the store.
Selecting wool carpet is one of the best choices that you can make when it comes to comfort and durability. Although it is expensive (upwards of $9.00 sq/ft) we think it is well worth investing in as it will last a long time and provide comfort and warmth that hard flooring can’t compete with.
Keep in mind that carpet also acts as a natural air filter. Dust and other harmful airborne particles sink down into the carpet where they are trapped for later removal via a vacuum cleaner. With hard flooring these particles drop right down onto the floor. The next person to walk across the floor will disturb these particles sending them right back up into the air where you can breath them in. This is a strong reason to consider installing wool carpet.