How to choose a saxony carpet?

mogwai

We've been looking at carpets in carpetright. Found a nice saxony one called glenmore which at 60% off was retailing at £29 psqm.

I got back home and had a look at saxony carpets online and found loads for £9 - 20 psqm..

Are these likely to be significantly lower quality than carpetrights glenmore saxony?? Are there any preferred types of saxony?

Sorry about basic qs, I am new to carpet buying, and finding it hard to choose amongst the saxony ranges..

I will prob order a few samples from each website but is there any kind of guideline on what is a better type of carpet apart from the price?

daveyjp

Carpetright are overpriced and their ridiculous claim that at £29 it has 60% off may be true, but I doubt they sold much at £70 ish sq m! At £29 sq m it will probably be twice what it can be purchased for.

Find a local independent store who isn't into marketing BS and ask them for a £29 carpet sample and compare it to what you saw. From my experience once you get to £30ish sq m you are into serious quality and it shows.

mogwai

thanks, thats a good idea..

looking around more on online carpet stores it seems like even with 60% off, its not a great deal..

pinkteapot

As I'm too lazy to type it all again, see my comments on another Carpetright thread recently:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/58539531#Comment_58539531 (post #6)

As noted there, we recently paid £22.50 per square meter for a good quality 80% wool carpet, including underlay and fitting. We would have got cheap and nasty polyprop at Carpetright for that money.

Definitely look for some local independents. When looking at carpets, one rule of thumb for checking the quality is to run your fingers down it to separate the strands and see how much force you have to apply to see the backing material underneath (if you see what I mean!). Higher quality carpets are generally denser so it's harder to see the backing through them.

daveyjp

A carpet swatch should have the thread density/weight on the label.

mogwai

Thanks - ive just ordered a whole bunch of swatches priced at around £20-30psqm.

I think I am now leaning towards 80:20, cormar, maybe their town and country range. Ive found this online for £21.65psqm so far. Just wondering though how 60oz will fare with 2 cats and a baby and maybe 40 or 50oz would be better? Also looking at their primo ultra range which is a lot cheaper and supposed to be easy clean for the stairs.

Thanks pink teapot, we are in essex but not near witham!I may check out local independents but will prob order online once ive seen a few swatches..

aggypanthus

After much research I bought a wool carpet from carpetwise last year.

most of their wool carpets are sold in other stores under a different name, a clue will be in the actual colour name on each sample. so it may be that Cormar suppy under a different name.
I think 60 weight may even be more than you need, depends how long you want to have the same carpet down.

Try googling carpet name and colours and see what you find.

aggypanthus

dont confuse saxony with wool twist, wool twist is more durable, saxony has a deeper smooth pile which will flatten in areas.
Avoid 100% wool.
Look here, they do a wool one call glenmore. by cormar. is it the same> its all wool. http://www.gradeoneflooring.co.uk/brand-name-carpets.php

Hintza

Be careful of buying online too. Having just finished building a house I learnt the hard way that when you do business on items that should last for years saving a wee bit here and there can be false economy.

With a carpet you want to buy it and have it fitted by the same people so that there can be no "It's the other guys fault" nonsense.

As has been said before buy from the independent he will give good advice and has his reputation at stake and in most cases will be just as competitive. If you have a problem then it is 100% his problem.

The one thing I did though was pay for good underlay online but ran it past my carpet man, he was happy with that.