When I first came into the flooring trade, the carpets sold by the retailer I worked for came from one supplier only – a Scandinavian company who sold their carpets “cut to plan”. Sadly, this isn’t done any more, so the idea of sending off the measurements of a room plan, being charged only for the square metreage of the room and receiving the carpets as pieces cut to the exact sizes is now no more than a dream. I never learned how they did this as it was well before the invention of the PC and estimating software, but without a doubt their square metre charge was much higher to account for the wastage, and they probably had a source for their offcuts that brought in even more money.
Nowadays, once you have the measurements of the areas to be fitted, it’s a bit more complicated but still not difficult to work out how much carpet you need to order so the installer has the right amount of material to work with, and ideally not too much as over-ordering makes you uncompetitive and excessive waste is not eco-friendly.
Carpets were originally supplied as “body carpet”, woven on a loom that was 91cm wide. The narrow strips were stitched together to create large areas and the underlay was always felt which allowed the seams to bed down and leave a smooth and even carpet surface. Then the machinery became available to create broadloom carpets which at first were 366cm wide (still used by some American companies) and later became the common sizes of 4m and 5m that are used today.
To work out how much carpet is needed for a job the starting point is finding out, or choosing, the correct width of carpet to be used. For example, my own home is a terraced house which is 4.8 metres wide from one side to the other, so it would be easiest to plan using a 5 metres wide carpet if I was planning to replace the entire floor area. But my lounge is 3.8 metres long, so I could cover just this room using a 4 metres wide piece laid with the pile running from side to side. There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule to help determine which is correct – we’ll cover some of the considerations in a later article – and in some cases, an estimator may have to work out two estimates, using two different carpet widths, to help to decide which would be cheaper, or whether one choice would give a better result, such as by limiting the number of seams that might be necessary.
In simple terms, it is then a case of planning where each piece of carpet is going to fit along the unrolled carpet and then working out how long the carpet piece needs to be so it can be ordered as a cut length, or cut from a stock roll ready for delivery and fitting. The ‘cutting plan’ is something many less experienced or would-be estimators find the most difficult, so I’ll cover that in a separate article and give you a foolproof ‘get-out-of-jail’ method that you could use if you came across a really difficult measure. For now, we need to think about the measurements we have already taken.
There are three important tolerances that you must be aware of: If you are ordering a cut length of carpet it is unlikely that the manufacturer or wholesaler will cut to your exact measurements (and it would add to the pressure on you if they did!). I always advise that you round up any length measurements down the carpet to the next 0.1 metre. So if the measurements were 3.35m it would become 3.4 metres.
Carpet fitters turn the edges of carpets up the skirting boards and then trim them and tuck them down between the skirting boards and the grippers. It is good to add an additional 0.1 metres to the rooms sizes to allow for this, and in case there is any variance in the straightness of the walls. This means that you round up to the next 0.1 metres and add 0.1 metres to each length size.
When it comes to the width, 4 metres and 5 metres are the manufacturer’s machine sizes and all carpets have to be trimmed in width after weaving or tufting. There is a tolerance on the width of plus or minus 1.25%. I doubt the ‘plus’ will ever apply – carpets rarely come in over-width – but when your width measurements are close to 4 or 5 metres, remember that the actual pieces you receive might be only 3.95m (395 cm) or 4.935m (493.5 cm). If you’re close to this, either plan in extra carpet, or call the supplier and ask if they have rolls that are close to the nominal size to do the job. Most manufacturers are happy to help in this way.
The last factor that needs to be considered (unless there’s also a pattern match) is the pile direction of each piece you need. Again, there’s no hard-and-fast rule except for one area of a home – the stairs. The pile direction on stairs MUST run downwards, at right angles to each stair nosing. This includes every step on a spiral staircase, or with kites and winders which need individual pieces for each shaped step – something we’ll look at when we cover measuring stairs in a future article.
Best practice, and the recommendation of BS5325, is that the pile direction is the same on adjacent areas and runs towards the main direction of travel (e.g. towards the main door of the room or home). However, there may be instances (such as with my lounge – see above) where the amount of carpet needed could be reduced by turning one or more rooms sideways. Where different pile directions meet, there is likely to be an apparent colour difference as the strength of the colour varies with the pile lay.
Next time, we’ll start looking at how you create cutting plans.
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