What Carpet Fiber is Best?

Steve: I wanted to tackle a question about carpet fiber. A lot of times people ask which carpet fiber is best, what’s the difference between one carpet fiber and another and I want to answer that right now.

What Carpet Fiber is Best?

So the two most common types of fiber that you can encounter are going to be nylon and polyester. There is also olefin and some other fibers that you might find in specially type carpets. Olefins you will find a lot in Berbers and things like that.

Nylon and polyester are real close competitors now. It didn’t used to be that way; it used to be that polyester was a distant second to nylon who was the reigning champion of wear-and-tear; so nylon still is the toughest fiber with the exception of wool. Wool is still a very tough fiber but sometimes not as practical to clean as nylon or polyester.

Nylons and polyesters in the carpets that we sell almost always continue to act as filament fibers which means just that they are stronger a fiber and when they weave it they weave it continuously so there is no Tufts that are going to peel or fuzz which used to be a problem in the carpets manufactured a few years back.

Polyester tends to be a little bit softer than nylons and sometimes more cleanable than nylons depending on how they make it.

So there is a little bit of trade off there. The best that you can get is going to be a solution dyed nylon. Many of those also come in a soft fiber too so you can get that soft feel and get the durability of nylon and you can get the clean-ability of a solution dyed fiber.

Check out more information on our website. This is a big topic and there is a lot to read on our website about which fibers are best. If you have questions call us at 847-639-1855.