Do you want a natural carpet? If you are keen to avoid chemicals in your home or want to take a more natural approach to your flooring, you will want to focus your search on natural materials, as opposed to synthetic. As well as helping your carpet to sit evenly across the floor surface, underlay adds additional insulation and will help keep heat inside the room. Choosing a good quality product makes all the difference when it comes to the longevity of your carpet, as it will be able to reduce the compression of the carpet and ensure it lasts longer. They are highly durable, making them a great option for those after something for high traffic areas of the home, such as entrance halls or stairs. Synthetic carpets Storage & organisation Furniture Textiles Kitchenware & tableware Kitchens Lighting Decoration Rugs, mats & flooring Beds & mattresses Baby & children Smart home Bathroom products Laundry & cleaning Plants & plant pots Home electronics Home improvement Outdoor living Food & beverages Christmas Shop Shop by room This velvety floor covering is from Elements London’s luxurious Symphony collection . This premium velour product offers a supersoft feeling underfoot and is made from durable Antron nylon. (Image credit: Elements London) What is a carpet's tog rating?

Underfloor heating underlay needs to allow enough heat to pass through to your room without sacrificing comfort and durability. There is little point in choosing carpet over wood flooring or LVT if you have to compromise on these fundamentals. The thermal insulating properties of a product are measured as a TOG (thermal overall grade). Any underlay with a TOG rating in excess of 2.0 is considered to be a good insulator. We consider anything with a TOG rating of over 3.0 to be exceptional, which naturally includes only a handful of underlays. What size is the space you are carpeting? If you are dealing with a very small space you might want to look at carpets that can help make the space look bigger, for example. The 10mm version meanwhile has a 45dB rating, meaning it’s very much in the top tier of sound reduction. The best underfloor heating carpet underlaysTredaire Dreamwalk is a product that delivers an unbeatable level of thermal insulation thanks to its extremely high TOG rating of 3.13.

It has a nice bounce to it too, due to its exceptional density (356 kg/m³), which also means it will easily outlast your new carpet. Runner Up: Wilsons Plushwalk And if you’re laying underfloor heating (UFH), research carried out by The Carpet Foundation and the Underfloor Heating Manufacturers Association showed that most carpets can be used with UFH without hindering the performance of the system. Where is the carpet being laid? The first step is to consider where in your house the carpet is going to be laid and the purpose it’s going to serve. This is a good starting point in determining how durable it needs to be.

In This Guide

Striped carpets, such as this from Carpetright , are great at hiding dirt, as well as adding plenty of interest —a good option for pet owners. (Image credit: Carpetright) Caring for your carpet When you buy a carpet it’ll come with a tog rating, just like a duvet. The tog rating is a measure of how much heat can pass through the material, effectively an indication of how insulating it is. Carpet togs range from around 0.7 to 3.0. The higher the tog rating, the more insulating it is. A higher carpet tog would therefore be ideal for a cold, draughty room. Some manmade fibres, like nylon 6.6, offer the same benefits as wool carpets but with better cleaning and maintenance properties,” says Gregory Powley-Lynch, operations director at Elements London.

One of the key benefits of choosing carpet over wood or vinyl flooring is the added sense of warmth it brings to a space. And when combined with an insulating thermal underlay this effect is compounded, leading to reduced heat loss, warmer rooms and even lower heating bills. Wool blend carpets are also sometimes referred to as '80/20 wool'. This is because they are usually 80% wool and 20% something else, probably synthetic, such as nylon.There are numerous manmade options for your carpet too, all of which tend to be highly stain resistant. Juteis the softest of the natural floor coverings, giving a comfortable feel underfoot," says Alex Heslop.However, bear in mind that if you want something for a high traffic area, it is not as hardwearing as some other options.