Carpet

A carpet is a textile floor covering typically consisting of an upper layer of pile attached to a backing. The pile was traditionally made from wool, but since the 20th century synthetic fibres such as polypropylene, nylon, and polyester have often been used, as these fibres are less expensive than wool. The pile usually consists of twisted tufts that are typically heat-treated to maintain their structure. The term carpet is often used in a similar context to the term rug, but rugs are mostly considered to be smaller than a room and not attached to the floor.^[1]

These include insulating a person's feet from cold tile or concrete floors, making a room more comfortable for sitting (e.g., when playing with children or as a prayer rug), reducing sound from walking (particularly in apartment buildings), and adding decoration or color to a room. Carpets can be made in any colour by using differently dyed fibres. Carpets can be decorated with many different patterns and motifs. Today, a wide range of carpets and rugs are available at various price and quality levels, from inexpensive, mass-produced synthetic carpets used in commercial buildings to costly hand-knotted wool rugs found in private residences.

Carpets can be produced through various methods, including weaving, needle felting, hand-knotting (as seen in oriental rugs), tufting (where pile is injected into a backing material), flat weaving, hooking (by pulling wool or cotton through the meshes of a sturdy fabric), or embroidering. Carpet is commonly made in widths of 12 or 15 feet (3.7 or 4.6 m) in the US and 4 or 5 m (13 or 16 ft) in Europe. Since the 19th and 20th century, where necessary for wall-to-wall carpet, different widths of carpet can be seamed together with a seaming iron and seam tape (formerly it was sewn together) and fixed to a floor over a cushioned underlay (pad) using nails, tack strips (known in the UK as gripper rods), adhesives, or occasionally decorative metal stair rods. Wall-to-wall carpet is distinguished from rugs or mats, which are loose-laid floor coverings, as wall-to-wall carpet is fixed to the floor and covers a significantly greater area.