What designers are specifying now: wall-to-wall is back

For twenty years the brief was hardwood everywhere and a rug on top. The sample requests we are filling this season say something different: wall-to-wall wool in bedrooms and media rooms, patterned broadloom up stairs and down halls, and bound rugs cut from the same roll so the whole floor reads as one material. Here is what designers are specifying through the showroom now, and what we are pulling for them.

Wool, cut pile, in a color

The default bedroom spec used to be a beige frieze. What we are cutting most this season is a dense wool cut pile in an actual color: a deep green, a tobacco, a dusty blue, an oatmeal with flecks. Wool's matte surface takes color without the sheen that made synthetic carpet look like carpet, and a solid color wool at 40 to 50 ounces reads like upholstery on the floor. The clients who grew up on hardwood are rediscovering that a bedroom with carpet is quieter, warmer and softer underfoot than one without, and designers are specifying it with a straight face again.

Pattern, up the stairs and down the hall

The stair runner was the first place pattern came back, and it has spread. A patterned Wilton on a stair, run across the landing and down the upstairs hall, is now a signature move: it makes the circulation spaces the most considered rooms in the house, which is the opposite of how they used to be treated. Plaids and small geometrics lead, with animal prints a strong third. The mills have noticed; Stanton, Prestige Mills and Bellbridge have all added patterned broadloom in the last two years, and most of it is sized to turn a stair.

Natural fiber, bound and bordered

Sisal and wool-sisal blends, cut to size and bound with a wide leather or linen border, are doing the job the oversized jute rug used to do, with far better wear. A bound rug from broadloom can be any size, so the "12 by 15 is too small and 12 by 18 does not exist" problem goes away, and the border is where the designer's hand shows. We cut more of these than any other custom item, and lead time is 3 to 5 weeks, not 20.

Carpet in the media room, on purpose

Media rooms and home theaters are being carpeted wall to wall for acoustics as much as comfort. A dense cut pile over a good pad takes the slap out of a room with a big screen and hard walls, and a dark solid wool or a low-contrast pattern disappears when the lights go down. It is the one room where we are asked for higher pile, and where a 7/16 inch pad is the right answer rather than the thin one.

What is not coming back

Shag in the living room, Berber in every room, and beige as a default. The requests we see for high pile are for a bedroom or a reading corner, in wool, in small sizes. Loop pile is being specified where it belongs, in offices and halls, and almost never on stairs. And the beige spec has been replaced by warm neutrals with texture: a heathered oatmeal, a ribbed wool, a linen-look flatweave.

How to sample it

Broadloom reads completely differently at 9 inches square than it does on a floor, so for a wall-to-wall spec we send two things: the memo sample for the scheme board and a larger cut, 18 by 18 or a strip across the full width, for the client to stand on. Both ship from the mill within 24 hours for approved trade accounts. The wall-to-wall carpet guide covers widths, seams and the questions clients ask, and the wool carpet filter is where we would start.