Fiber Distortion

“Why my carpets don’t look good even after cleaned?” 

Today I want to talk about fiber distortion, as it can possibly sound obvious, it wasn’t so common some time ago.

 As the carpeting industry evolves, we get many new different types of carpet fibers in the market. One of them is the “famous” Polyester. When fiber distortion occur, the fibers don’t reflect the lights the same way they did before, resulting on darker areas and patterns on the carpet, which many times, look very similar to dirt. 

The marketing made on top of polyester carpets is by far the best marketing ever done on the carpeting industry, and some of the “benefits” claimed are that it is stain resistant, cheaper, softer and hold on to colors better. But is polyester that good? The answer is a big fat NO. Polyester is the least resilient fiber ever mande. Manufactured from recycled pet, its fiber only last between 1-3 years before they are completely worn down and showing a lot of wear on the traffic lanes, which results on replacing your carpets more often.

 The king of the synthetic fibers is Nylon, which can last up to 30 years and still look new, except for it’s color loss. But if we do some math, dying a good nylon carpet every 15 years is about 20 times cheaper than replacing polyester carpet every 2 years.

 Q: Is there a way to prevent fiber distortion and wear? 

A: You can make your carpets last longer by vacuuming them twice a week, taking your shoes off when you get home and getting your carpets cleaned by a professional every 6 months, but you can’t avoid fiber distortion on polyester. It will happen.