Carpets - As the king of floor coverings!

Types and construction of textile floor coverings

A carpet always consists of several layers. The upper layer, which is visible after laying, is called the pile layer. This consists of yarn, which is produced from synthetic or natural fibres according to regional and cultural preferences. Hybrids, mixed fibres from a proportion of synthetic as well as natural fibres, combine the advantages of both materials. The second layer is the back layer. A distinction is made between fleece and textile backing. The antiquated foam back is hardly produced anymore.

There are two common processes according to which carpeting is produced by the metre: In the weaving process, yarn is introduced into a loom and woven. More often, however, the technique of tufting is utilised. With this process, carpeting can be produced more quickly and thereby more economically. In the production of tufted carpets, the thread is needled into the back from below (according to the sewing machine principle) so that a loop structure is created on the surface. If these tufted loops are cut open at the end, they are described as velour.

Trends in the field of carpets by the metre

The leading international trade show for floor coverings, DOMOTEX, presents innovative techniques, materials and designs every year. A strong indicator of upcoming trends is the Young Designer Trendtable, an area at DOMOTEX where international design talents gather ideas for the flooring of the future. In recent years, more and more creative decors, diverse colours and unconventional patterns have been presented, contrasting with monotonous materials: wood and stone. According to young designers, even bold designs such as metallic coatings or glitter will be increasingly popular in the upcoming years.

Quite exciting are also the designs with symbioses of a wide variety of materials. For example, a floor covering that represents a combination of carpeting and ceramic mosaic tiles was a big source of inspiration.

 We are always ready to offer you carpets at a great price. Through our distribution structure, we can ensure that you receive the best carpet at the best price and not just a cheap carpet! In addition to our extensive range of carpet coverings, we also offer you carpet flooring by the metre, a special and inexpensive carpet.

Why carpet? incredible advantages of textile carpets

The most obvious advantage is probably the enormous selection of colours, textures and patterns, which offers design possibilities for everyone and therefore a wide scope for individuality and creativity. In addition to appearance, feel and acoustics, other aspects are decisive factors when choosing your carpeting.

Comfortable feel and a pleasant sensation thanks to carpets

The texture of a carpet describes what a carpet feels like. A comfortable barefoot feeling is created by surfaces that are fluffy or rough to varying degrees. The surface of the yard goods ensures a pleasant temperature sensation and therefore a high level of living comfort.

Sound insulation and good acoustics due to flooring material

When it comes to acoustics, the question is: What should a floor sound like? It's all about what you don't hear. A good carpet offers sound absorption in addition to integrated, natural-impact sound insulation. This reduces the room noise, which results in good acoustics in the room. The carpet flooring reduces the volume of disturbing background noise in a room, as is necessary in for example sound studios or open-plan offices.

Ideal for dust allergy sufferers

Contrary to the common belief that carpeting is harmful to the respiratory organs and promotes the development of allergies or asthmatic diseases, carpeting today is at least partially rehabilitated. Carpets dust catchers? That's right! But with regular vacuuming, the textile covering does not deliver the fine dust again into the breathing air. Because many carpets can reduce the fine dust content in the air by up to 50%, such carpet floor coverings are explicitly recommended by the German Allergy and Asthma Association (DAAB).

Further advantages of a carpet

The carpets are also superior to their brothers in flat materials when it comes to maintenance. The carpet is easy to maintain and can last a lifetime if properly cleaned. You can even save money and contribute to a clean and green environment: the heat-insulating function of a carpet saves energy while at the same time ensuring optimum temperature sensitivity. According to a study by the European Carpet Community (ETG), you can reduce your heating costs by up to 12% annually.

Carpet also offers a high level of slip resistance. In addition, the soft surface of the carpet is easy on the joints and protects against problems of the kinetic system. However, this is only a small part of the health-promoting features of textile carpeting.

Please also note that carpet is not only available in the familiar sheet material, but also in module form as carpet tiles. The carpet is not supplied here by the metre but is modularised in pieces of 50x50 cm. This and the self-laying properties of the carpet offer advantages when transporting and laying carpet tiles over the carpet in rolls.

Comfort with carpet in children's rooms, baby rooms, bedrooms and living areas

Children love to play on a warm and fluffy carpet in the nursery. As it is harmless for health and the environment due to the reduction of fine dust and the ecological production mentioned above, laying on a comfortable carpet in the children's room is the first choice for many. The carpeting in the children's room lowers the noise level and ensures that your neighbours don't notice when the toys fall on the floor. Children's carpets by the metre are also warm and pleasant to walk on. Even if your children fall asleep on the carpet in the children's room, the children's carpet yard ware is a pleasant and protective underlay on which the children can relax. At the moment, this trend is gradually reversing so that demand and therefore the reputation of carpets by the metre will rise again in the future.

The carpeting in the bedroom also offers a feel-good atmosphere if you place your feet on a fluffy carpet in the morning. A soft surface caresses you during the first steps of the day and in addition, the carpet for bedrooms offers many possibilities for an individual design of carpeting. We have therefore put together an interesting selection for you in the category of bedroom carpet, in which you will hopefully find the right carpet for your bedroom.

The carpeting in the living room is a guarantee of warmth and comfort. To create a cosy atmosphere in the living room, we recommend a harmonious combination of comfortable seating, warm wall design and a pleasant floor carpet, as these components complement each other ideally and enhance every living room. The moment you take off your shoes after a long day and enter your home is supposed to be a relief for your body and soul, so reward yourself with the greatest possible comfort for your feet.

For all areas, BRICOFLOR can also supply you with carpets by the metre. We are always keen to offer you the appropriate carpet or special offers for carpets. Visit our corresponding offer page to buy carpet at a good price!

The hotel industry swears by textile floor coverings

In the hospitality sector, a homely ambience is emphasised as well. Especially in hotel rooms, carpet ensures a hygienic environment, as it is easy to clean; footfall noise is also considerably reduced. In corridors and in the foyer, carpet flooring is used to create a quiet environment by absorbing sound, as footsteps and loud conversations are also swallowed. In addition, textile carpeting has a timelessly elegant effect and pays due respect to the guest.

Carpet for offices and representative business premises

In the workplace, it is an enormous advantage to create an atmosphere in which both employees and customers feel at home. The working environment has a significant impact on staff motivation and attitude, as creativity can develop more easily in a comfortable and familiar environment. Hard floors can subconsciously create high pressure and inhibit productivity.

In open-plan offices the carpet by the metre is unbeatable. Pleasant for employees, easy for cleaning staff and stylish for visitors. For example call centres, impress once again with improved acoustics and sound absorption, so that telephone operators and their conversation partners can make an efficient call without annoying noise, which is essential for the relationship with your customers. An office carpet helps to ensure effective work, which is why an office carpet should always be referred over a smooth floor. For the office, contract and industrial carpets, you should also take a look at needle fleece.

In conference rooms, sales rooms or other areas with a representative function, style and efficiency should be expressed, because one thing is clear: the floor covering is part of the first impression. At the same time, a carpet in the contract sector is also used intensively and requires a suitable service class so that the carpet can still play out all its advantages even after a longer period of time.

An additional advantage in favour of laying textile floor coverings in offices is object-specific quality features, such as chair castor suitability or an antistatic surface, which prevent electrostatic charging by devices such as monitors or copiers. In addition, most yarns have a very good classification in the highest fire protection classes, which means low flammability and no smoke development. In the case of offices or other commercial premises, you will also benefit from our cost-effective individual offers for office carpets tailored to you and your needs.

What are the quality characteristics of carpets?

There are many criteria that have an influence on the quality of carpets by the metre and therefore also on the price of the carpeting. We work together with a wide variety of manufacturers so that we can always offer you the right product for your requirements.

The right choice of yarn material for your needs

The classification of a carpet into one of the luxury classes depends on the quality of the yarn used. Currently, two yarns are preferred: polypropylene (PP) and polyamide (PA). While PP is not a very durable, but very cheap option, polyamide fibres are much more resistant and therefore cost a little more.

The nylon fibre polyamide 6.6 is currently probably the highest quality variant of synthetic fibres for floor carpets and, depending on the surface structure, can convince with a wide variety of cross-sections for carpets by the metre. Furthermore, PA 6.6 convinces with a significantly higher degree of gloss compared to polypropylene and is much more durable. The light fastness of the yarn should also always be taken into account, especially in rooms with strong daylight radiation. This states that floor coverings that are exposed to intense sunlight do not show any colour fading over a long period of time.

Even the back of the carpeting can be enchanting

As already explained, a carpet consists of a pile/use layer and a back layer. While manufacturers initially used foam backs, nowadays more advanced materials are used. The foam back had significant weaknesses that were responsible for the negative image of the carpeting, among other things. In addition to the environmentally harmful production process, waves were often formed, which often led to tripping hazards and a not very aesthetic overall picture. What is more, it was a pain to remove the foam back from the screed or existing floor coverings.

Today, textile and fleece backs dominate the backsides of floor coverings. These are clearly more environmentally friendly in production and can keep up with the positive characteristics of the old back linings such as thermal insulation and softness of the underground. In addition, modern backs have various advantages. Fleece backings, for example, no longer have to be glued. In smaller rooms the attachment can be already sufficient with fleece backs and also with a special double-edged adhesive tape, even a self-laying transfer completely without attachment can be possible.

The carpet with textile backing has a little higher quality. They are glued with a biological adhesive, i.e. no synthetic resin adhesive and therefore offer the best hold. This also prevents the formation of waves. They can also be removed without leaving any residue. The various modern fastening options therefore also ensure that they are easy to remove and can be reused depending on the material and wear.

Carpets by the metre surfaces - velours, loop and co.

The upper layer, the so-called pile layer or wear layer, is usually given greater attention, which is understandable as it can be evaluated by any observer. A distinction is made here between two common types of production: the loop pile and the cut pile. Basically, in the beginning, there is a loop, no matter whether it is looped goods or velour flooring. This is stitched from below through the carrier layer (tufting) or woven as a woven loop.

Looped carpeting tends to be cheaper, as the manufacturing process is less extensive and significantly less yarn is used. With velour carpets, the loops are cut at the turning point, resulting in a soft surface with a robust structure. Since this process uses approximately 30% more yarn for the same pile height and density, it explains why carpets by the metre made of velour are more expensive than loops. It is therefore advisable to pay attention to the appropriate service class, especially in the contract sector and in heavily frequented areas, as loop and velour carpets cannot have the same price per square metre for the same service class. In addition, a distinction is made between the short pile and long pile velour in the case of velour carpets. 

The German manufacturer Vorwerk carpet is particularly well known for short pile velour. With its Vorwerk carpet collections, it has absolute top products and rightly the nose ahead. Types of high pile carpets include the common crimped velour and frisé velour, in which the Associated Weavers company specialises.

In addition to these types, there are also exotic fabrics such as the so-called Shag-Flor or simply Shaggy. Depending on the manufacturer, this is a very long pile of ruffled velour. However, this is mainly used for fitted carpets and less for carpeting by the metre.

Which manufacturers dominate the carpet market?

As in all areas, there are good, very good and less good products and corresponding manufacturers in the carpet market. There are renowned manufacturers who serve the entire market for textile carpeting with their collections and those who have specialised in a carpet segment, the production of luxury goods, the use of special materials or purely object-related carpeting. In addition to well-known wholesalers, we would like to introduce you to four very special manufacturers and their most popular collections, which also cut a good figure on the international carpet market.

Carpet for your life - the motto of brand manufacturer AW

The Belgian company Associated Weavers, AW for short, specialises in fluffy and exquisite high-pile carpets. AW is one of the largest producers of tufted carpets for the home. The presentation of two collections, each of which celebrated its premiere at DOMOTEX, caused quite a stir. The carpet series Sensation advertised with high-quality product videos is a very special highlight in terms of comfort and design that must definitely be seen.

Victoria carpets - high quality that stands the test of time

The absolute definition of a high-quality carpet company is the British manufacturer Victoria Carpets. For over 125 years, the manufacturer of top-quality textile floor coverings has been inspiring lovers of imaginative carpet floor coverings around the globe. On 1st January 2013, Victoria Carpets was granted a Royal Warrant to Her Majesty The Queen and also supplied the red carpet for the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton in April 2011. Victoria Carpets won numerous awards and is a member of the Carpet Foundation. They proudly produce high-quality carpets that stand the test of time.

Abingdon carpets - made in the United Kingdom

The British-based company is proud of producing its carpets only from the best, top-grade raw materials. By choosing a product that was made in the United Kingdom, you are also choosing an eco-friendly option, as the transport routes are relatively short. It is worth mentioning that Abingdon's high-quality carpet has a wear warranty ranging from 5 to 12 years. Currently, Abingdon Flooring is producing more than 14 million square meters of carpet per year!

Vorwerk carpet - innovative and durable textiles made in Germany

Another pioneer in the field of sustainable production of textile carpeting is certainly the German company Vorwerk carpets. The manufacturer, also known for robust contract floors, has made an international name for itself through the introduction of its own certificate. Other brands also want to be certified with the Life Balance label introduced by Vorwerk, which is recommended by the DAAB and praised in the highest tones. Also worth mentioning is the very high sense of responsibility regarding environmental protection, which, like the products from Balsan, is also honoured with the renowned GUT label.

FAQ- Frequently asked questions about carpets

What is a carpet?

The phrase "carpeting by the metre" or "carpeting for laying" is for a textile floor covering on a roll (usually 4 or 5 m wide) which is glued from wall to wall over its entire surface.

What types of carpets are there?

Loop: Carpet with yarn in the form of single loops attached to the back. This structure is an absolute classic and is often used in both residential and commercial areas due to its good price/performance ratio.

Velours: Carpet where the yarn loops (see "Loop") have been separated and opened upwards. The surface texture is particularly soft and velvety. This makes velour carpets look particularly warm and cosy.

Twist: A velour carpet (see "Velours") in which the yarn is slightly longer or more piled up overall and has been twisted in addition to small swirls for stability. Twisted velour carpets are particularly soft and fluffy and have excellent acoustic properties.

Needle fleece/needle felt: Smooth surface structure which makes the product particularly hard-wearing. The most popular carpet in offices and shop fitting.

What are the advantages of a carpet?

Pleasant to the touch: Carpets have a pleasantly soft surface and are therefore particularly suitable for bedrooms and children's rooms in the living area.

Acoustics: No other floor covering absorbs footfall sound as well as a carpet. That's why carpets are still the first choice in offices and hotels.

Warmth: Carpets radiate warmth and comfort.

Variety of colours & designs: Carpets are available in various textures, and numerous attractive designs and colours. Carpets, therefore, enable individual interior design like hardly any other floor covering.

Good indoor air quality: Unlike hard floor coverings such as laminate, carpets can absorb dust and other particles on the floor, making the indoor air cleaner.

Ideal for underfloor heating: Carpets have excellent properties when used with underfloor heating.

Are carpets suitable for allergy sufferers?

Contrary to all prejudices, carpets are ideally suited for allergy sufferers, as the flooring material binds dust and other particles to the floor, making the indoor air quality in rooms with carpeting significantly better than in rooms with hard coverings such as laminate.

What should you look out for when buying a carpet?

The material of the pile layer: There are carpets made of polyamide, polyester or polypropylene yarn. Polyamide is particularly hard-wearing, non-fading and has a pleasant feel. Polypropylene is characterised by a particularly attractive price. Polyester stands strategically between polypropylene and polyamide.

Pile weight: The pile weight indicates the amount of yarn material used. The more yarn used, the higher the quality of the carpet.

Service class: The service class indicates the durability of a floor covering. In residential areas, a carpet with a service class of at least 23 should be used, in commercial applications, service class 33 is usually selected.

Luxury class: The luxury class indicates how comfortable and luxurious a carpet is on a scale of 1 to 5 crowns. This is particularly important for living spaces.

Quality labels: Look out for other awards such as the Blue Angel, the GuT certificate or the Green Label Plus. These symbols distinguish a high-quality carpet.

How to lay carpet?

First of all, the base must be clean, level and primed. Then apply the adhesive to the floor with a toothed spatula and place the carpet in the adhesive bed.

Laying carpets - not as difficult as you might thin

Laying a carpet is definitely not witchcraft. If you follow a few instructions, you can lay your carpets yourself without any problems.

1. Measurement of the room

In the beginning, the room must be measured. Here it should be noted that the walls rarely run completely parallel. It is therefore advisable to measure the room in several places so that you know the widest width and the longest length. Since carpets are usually sold by the metre in 4 m and 5 m widths, it is advisable to consider the direction in which they are aligned in order to minimise waste.

2. Preparation of the substrate for the carpeting:

If you have now ordered the right carpet by the metre at a good price online, the substrate must be thoroughly prepared. The floor only needs to be pre-treated with levelling compound in case of unevenness or cracks and must always be cleaned. If there is a hard floor (laminate, engineered wood or vinyl flooring), coarse joints or other unevenness should also be filled so that the floor covering carpet can be optimally fixed.

Old carpeting should never be used as a substrate for new floor coverings, as this can produce moisture and microorganisms such as bacteria can multiply freely. If you remove the old floor covering, make sure you also remove all adhesive residues.

3. Cutting the carpet to size:

The best results are achieved by rolling out the carpet roll and pressing the carpets firmly into the side edges of the room on the walls. Now roughly pre-cut the carpet with a carpet knife and a cutting edge. In any case, allow yourself 3-4 cm space so that no folds or waves occur and make the fine cut after fixing. If one sheet is not sufficient for your project, overlap the second sheet by approx. 5 cm and cut through both to create a seamless transition.

4. Fixation of the carpeting:

If you decide to lay the carpet loosely by the metre, you can work with double-sided adhesive tape. For fleece backs, there is special Velcro tape for installation. Attach the tape to the edge of the room as well as to the door thresholds and paint any dents or waves in the carpet from the inside of the room to the outside. 

When laying with a dispersion adhesive, half of the carpet is turned over and the adhesive is applied to the free area. Once you have folded back the textile floor covering and smoothed it out from the inside to the outside, the other side of the room is ready. After you have laid the entire carpet, you can devote yourself to fine cutting and, if necessary, attach skirting boards.