Carpet can be made of many different materials. Originally, wool was the most common application. Today, synthetic fibers have been engineered to make your carpet more durable, reliable, and easier to clean. However, not all carpets are made alike with polypropylene, nylon, polyester, and more being used today. Although, there are many benefits to having these typically less expensive textiles options.

Nylon

When dying the carpet, there are also many ways to apply color and durability. Solution-dyed nylons (SDNs) are favored by many flooring experts because their ability to be cleaned by 10% bleach concentrate. Carpets can have the dyed applied to the top layer of the filament or homogenous throughout the pile.

Imagine a radish and a carrot. When you cut through a radish, the top layer is red, and the inside is white, whereas a carrot is orange all the way through. SDNs are like carrots. Each fiber is pre-dyed before being tufted yarned onto the backing. This makes the color all the way through and not faded or just printed on the carpet, allowing the color to maintain longer and be more durable to strong cleaning products like bleach.

Olefin

Do not feel limited to just SDN carpets because nowadays, we have also engineered many carpet cleaners other than bleach! Polypropylene (olefin) carpet is highly desired because of its wool-like imitating features. Olefin may not have the “bounce back” feature you have in other carpets but is extremely water-resistant and can be applied outside. It does, however, like to attract oils and makes it hard to clean any oil-based stains.

Polyester

When comparing stain resistance properties, polyester carpet is superior over nylons and olefins. It can be compiled of recycle products and is known for being excellent at retaining texture retention. Polyester carpets are another great option with a wide variety in their color palette.

With the carpet engineering evolving through pile, texture, loop, and dyes, there is a lot going into the manufacturing of each carpet. Find a carpet that fits your design taste and that you like how it feels. Knowing how each carpet can respond to stains and foot traffic can help you make your decision feeling confident.

When you say, “polyester,” do you mean just plain polyester, PET polyester or PTT polyester? There is lots of confusion about what the terms really mean. Recently, most of the polyester fibers used for carpet construction have been of the PET variety. PET polyester is manufactured primarily from used plastic soda bottles. It is an improved fiber over the original polyester, but still retains some of the performance issues, about which you may have heard stories.

The high points of PET carpets are that they are inexpensive, and the fiber is highly colorfast and resistant to water-based stains (though susceptible to oil-based stains).  Additionally, there is a particularly soft and lush feel (carpet folks call it good “hand”) to new polyester carpet. The main complaints about carpets made from this fiber are that they crush and mat quickly, and that oil-based stains are difficult – if not impossible to remove.

PTT polyester is a late generation fiber refined and introduced by DuPont in 2000, under the trade name Sorona. It has some interesting characteristics, like 37% renewable resource content (corn-based) and reported extra stain and performance capabilities over earlier generations of polyester. Because of its unique performance characteristics in carpet construction, the FTC (in March, 2009) authorized the new generic fiber name and classification, Triexta. Mohawk’s Smartstrand carpets are manufactured from this fiber.

According to DuPont and Mohawk, carpets constructed from triexta fibers will perform every bit as well as nylon – and yet retain the soft feel (the hand) and stain-resistance of polyester.