Not only are there many carpet benefits there are also many choices. Carpet is the most practical, fashionable, and versatile flooring on the market today. Carpet accounts for more than half of all flooring purchases that are made each and every year. The fact is, carpet has outsold every other type of flooring for more than 60 years.

Carpet offers you several advantages that other flooring options can’t compete with. Below, you will find many of the features that carpet will add to your home.

Warmth
For warmth, carpet is the best choice you can make. A carpet under foot brings warmth to any room from your bedroom to family room or living room.

Insulation
A benefit so often overlooked is that of insulation. Wall to wall carpet over carpet pad increases the insulation of a floor significantly over any other floor covering.

Safety
Unlike tile and other smooth surfaces carpet offers a slip resistant surface that will prevent accidents along with a natural cushion in the event of someone falling. Safety is a very important concern especially for the elderly and young children.

Sound Reduction
Do you have a house full of kids or live above another residence? Carpet will reduce noise better than any other type of flooring. Carpet works to dampen noise in three ways:
1. Reduces surface noise from foot traffic
2. Absorbs airborne sound
3. Blocks transmission of sound
These qualities are valuable in apartments as well as semi-detached homes.

Hiding Surface Irregularities
Adding carpet to a room can also disguise many existing damage to the floor. While it may not hide a warped floor that looks like a roller coaster it will cover many damaged with ease that would need to be filled or replaced for many other types of flooring.

Ease of Care
Stain resistance is a real plus with most carpets that are manufactured today. Short of deliberate abuse or neglect spills and stains are much easier to cleanup than in the past.

Clean Air
A properly maintained and cleaned carpet improves air quality by acting as a filter and trapping allergy causing dust and allergens.

Variety of Use
Carpets aren’t only for floors anymore, which is a really great thing. You can easily add carpet to steps, stairs, walls, posts, and other non level surfaces, even a ceiling without having to worry about it slipping, lifting, or buckling.

Comfort
There is not another floor covering that is more comfortable than carpet to lay down on.

Flexibility
Carpet is the primary foundation in almost any room. Because it is available in a variety of different colors and textures, it helps to create an unlimited number of possibilities for decorating. From the neutral tones to rich solids, carpet is the first step you can take to make your home look better than ever.

Low cost
Carpet doesn’t cost a lot of money, as it offers an economical alternative to the other types of expensive flooring. Even with professional installation, you won’t pay nearly as much as you would for hard surfaces.

Life span
The carpets of today are very durable and can outlast most other types of flooring available on the market. All you have to do is select a type of carpet that has a life span of 5 – 30 years or more, which is very common now days.

Warranty
With most manufacturers, you can get great warranties with your carpet purchase. This way, you’ll be protected when you install your new carpet. Once installed, all you have to do is enjoy it – as the warranty will ensure that you are very well protected.

Carpet a room using carpet samples. This creative method of carpeting a room works out great for a casual family room or kids bedroom. One of the real benefits besides costs is that when an area looks worn it is easily replaced without replacing the carpet in the entire room.

Discontinued carpet samples can be purchased at retail carpet dealers for as little as .50 cents each for smaller samples and a bit more for the larger sizes.  The size of both the sample and the room you are carpeting will dictate how many samples you’ll need.  If samples are not available you can also purchase small remnants of carpet. You’ll also need to purchase staples or floor adhesive to attach the samples to the floor.

If you are doing a children’s playroom, using multi-colored carpet is perfect.  It is very colorful and if a spill stains one of the squares of carpet,
you can quickly and easily pull it back up and install a new square.  This is a great advantage to doing a playroom this way.

The only things you’ll actually need when you install carpet samples or squares in a room is a carpet knife and a staple gun.  The 5/8″ staples seem to work the best for squares and samples.

All you need to do is put the carpet piece in place and staple in two or three staples along each side.  Make sure you wiggle the head of the stapler down deep between the fibers, or between the border and the fibers, so you can hide the staples as much as possible.

If you are carpeting a concrete floor, you can use either all purpose adhesive or double sided carpet tape instead of staples.  With either case, this is best to do when padding isn’t that important.  You can use padding as well if you don’t mind the complications, although without it, its pure simplicity.

You may also choose to lay out your pieces of carpet first, then decide where each individual piece will go.  When you reach walls, heating sources, or other obstacles, you can quickly and easily cut the pieces to fit. If you happen to make a mistake, it will cost you almost nothing, instead of costing
you a fortune.  When you make a mistake, all you have to do is start over with a different sample.

Before you begin to put the carpet down, you should always measure the size of the room first so that you can determine how many samples you need to purchase. If one store does not have enough samples you can usually find more samples at another store. To save drive time you might want to call around and find out what stores have ahead of time.

Although the samples will range in size the average is about 18 X 18 inches.  Using  pieces that are the same size is perhaps the easiest way to do it. Using multiple sizes is more work but if you have an artistic flare you will find it worth your time cutting and fitting multiple sizes of carpet samples.

Keep in mind that using samples or remnants is a very unusual style and if you are preparing a house for sale this is probably not the best choice for most rooms.