The number of vacuum cleaners on the market is staggering, so just how do you choose a vacuum for your carpets? The temptation can be to simply pick the cheapest model around. However, if you care about looking after your flooring, or you’ve recently invested in carpeting throughout the house, you’ll want to choose a little more carefully.
How to Choose a Carpet Type
Two of the most common types of carpet are nylon and wool. While woollen carpets tend to hold onto their appearance for longer than nylon and other synthetics, they need greater care. This includes avoiding direct sunlight, for example, as UV rays can cause faster degradation of the fabric. What’s more, wool is also much more resistant to flames, but all of this comes at a cost. That’s why the most affordable types of carpet are usually synthetic by design.
Budget aside, there are other considerations to make:
- How long do you want the carpet to last?
- Are spillages likely to occur, due to kids for example?
- Will children be playing frequently on the carpet?
- How much foot traffic is there likely to be?
- Is the carpet going to be exposed to moisture?
These questions will help to determine what kind of carpet to buy. If you need help answering them or working out the best carpet to choose, reach out to Jager’s Carpets, a leading carpet store in Melbourne.
Which Vacuum Cleaner Is Best for Carpets?
Vacuuming on a regular basis can extend the life of your carpet, but some machines can have greater effects than others. So, to help you choose the best vacuum cleaner for your carpet, we’ve put together a quick guide.
Foot Traffic and Carpet Soil
When choosing your vacuum, you should think about the amount of foot traffic that your carpets see, and thus the amount and type of carpet soils you expect to be dealing with. Carpet soils are essentially the minute particles of dirt that accumulate on your carpet. These usually include regular old dirt, sand, grit and dust.
For example, if you have young children or pets in the house, you’re likely to see your carpets accumulating dust and dirt quite rapidly. There’ll also be plenty of foot traffic passing over those carpets on a regular basis. The problem with carpet soils of this type is that they embed themselves between the fibres of the fabric. When people walk on soiled carpets, the particles have a sandpaper-like effect on the carpet fibres. Over time, this causes a dirtied appearance.
Foot Traffic and Carpet Soils: Which Vacuum to Choose?
You’ll want to ensure that you choose a vacuum cleaner that has a revolving brush with aggressive bristles. Combined with a beater bar, this will help to extract those embedded soils and vacuum them away.
Carpet Fibers
The type of carpet fibres used in your floor’s design is also important here. Many carpets use synthetic fibres like nylon and polyester. This gives them excellent durability when compared to traditional fabrics like wool. But if you do have a carpet made from a natural fibre such as wool, then you’ll need to treat them with greater care.
While wool isn’t as strong as nylon or polyester in manufacturing durable carpets, it’s still a strong fabric. After all, it’s been used across the globe for thousands of years to create comfortable flooring. However, it’ll still have trouble standing up to vacuum cleaners that use excessive force.
Carpet Fibers: Which Vacuum to Choose?
For carpets made from natural fibres, you’ll want to choose a machine with softer, more flexible fibres that are not so tightly packed together. In most cases, softer and less dense bristles are best for other types of natural carpet fibres. However, it’s worth checking with your carpet’s manufacturer if you have carpets made out of something other than wool.
Upright vs Cylinder
There are two main types of vacuum cleaners: upright and cylinder. Uprights are usually most popular in countries like America, while the rest of the world mostly opts for a cylinder vacuum. Upright models are best for synthetic carpets due to features like the beater bar and revolving brush, as discussed above. However, cylinders are more flexible, offering greater maneuverability and tackling a broader range of flooring with ease.
Upright vs Cylinder: Which Vacuum to Choose?
If you mostly have synthetic carpeting and expect a lot of foot traffic, then you’ll likely want to opt for an upright vacuum with a beater bar. That said, if you have natural carpeting, or if you simply want to tackle wooden flooring and rugs too, then you may want to consider a more forgiving and gentle cylinder vacuum. However, both models can be used for cleaning carpets if your choices are limited.