Flooring Blog
November 6th, 2014
Carpet, Soft Carpet and Ultra Soft Carpet.......
Soft yarn! The consumers love it. But is it the best yarn for the consumer?
First off: how it's made. The fiber manufacturers have worked with the yarn to get smaller and smaller deniers. The smaller the denier the softer the yarn. But how does it perform?
Nylon yarn is naturally a high wearing fiber. Very resilient. It will stand up to even the toughest of wear patterns. The smaller deniered yarn is still nylon but because of the inherent softness it will start to mush (is that a technical term? LOL) down and kind of pack together like snow. Because it can do this the appearance can take a hit if the denier is too small (hence softer yarn).
Also, there have been complaints industry wide of vacuuming problems with the ultra soft yarns. The fiber manufacturers and the carpet mills have gone to great lengths to educate the flooring sales people and the consumer of the requirement that ultra soft yarns require in a vacuum cleaner. Most vacuum cleaners just don't perform on ultra soft yarns because the yarns are mushing down (not matting). Matting down is quite different from mushing down. A matted carpet can be pulled up and pileated with a good vacuum cleaner whereas the same vacuum cleaner will not pull up the ultra soft yarns.
So, what about soft yarns. Overall they are a good product. Soft to the touch, resilient and high wear. Where the jury is still out is in the ultra soft yarns. They don't have the test of time on their side and with the fact that you will probably have to buy a new vacuum cleaner along with the high cost of the ultra soft carpet your initial outlay will be pretty hefty. In our opinion the ultra soft yarns are probably not worth the money you spend on them, the buying a new vacuum factor and the fact that performance is still in question, we prefer to stick with the mid deniered soft yarn systems that will give you higher performance and won't break the bank on a new high end vacuum.
Nuff said, eh?
