Guide · For the trade
Custom carpet: custom wool broadloom in your color, pattern and width
Custom carpet is broadloom woven or tufted to a designer's specification instead of pulled from a running line: a mill's design in your colors, a pattern rescaled or redrawn, a width that fits the stair or the room, or a design from your own artwork. Through Interiors a custom wool carpet runs rendering, a woven strike-off to approve in 4 to 6 weeks, then production of 8 to 16 weeks depending on the mill, with minimums that start around 50 square yards for a custom color and more for a custom weave; it is installed anywhere in the country.
This guide is for the designer who has found the right pattern in the wrong color, needs a stair runner and a wall-to-wall that match exactly, or has a client whose room wants a carpet no line offers. It covers the four kinds of custom carpet and what each costs in time, which mills run which program, minimums, the timeline and what we need to start. For rugs, as opposed to broadloom, start with the custom rugs guide.
Four kinds of custom carpet
| Program | What changes | Typical minimum | Lead time | Mills that run it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custom color | An existing design re-dyed or rewoven in your colors; the pattern and construction stay | About 50 to 100 sq yd | Strike-off 4 to 6 weeks, production 8 to 12 weeks | Bloomsburg Carpet, Prestige Mills, Stanton, Couristan |
| Custom pattern or scale | A design rescaled, recombined or redrawn; new colors as well | About 100 sq yd | Strike-off 4 to 6 weeks, production 10 to 16 weeks | Bloomsburg Carpet, Prestige Mills, Milliken |
| Custom width | A design woven at runner width (27, 32, 36 in) or a nonstandard width to avoid a seam | By the linear foot, usually 30 ft and up | 8 to 12 weeks | Bloomsburg Carpet, Kane Carpet, Couristan |
| Full custom design | Your artwork or ours from your brief, on the mill's loom or tufting line | About 100 sq yd woven; lower for hand-tufted | Rendering 2 weeks, strike-off 4 to 6 weeks, production 12 to 20 weeks | Bloomsburg Carpet, Milliken, Prestige Mills and our hand-made custom program |
Minimums are the mill's, vary by construction and we confirm them on the quote. Prestige Mills marks 189 styles in our library as full custom, meaning color, scale and fiber are all open.
Custom wool carpet: why wool is the fiber for custom work
Wool takes dye predictably and deeply, so a strike-off in a custom color matches the pom closely and the production matches the strike-off. Bloomsburg Carpet weaves custom Wilton and velvet in wool in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, on 12-foot looms with some patterns at 13 feet 2 inches and 15 feet and is our first call for a custom-color pattern on a stair or a formal room. Nylon custom is Milliken's territory: its PrintWorks precision dyeing puts a custom pattern and color onto a 13 foot 6 inch nylon broadloom, Class I rated and Green Label Plus certified, which is the route for a hotel corridor, a club or a large residence where the budget is nylon but the design is bespoke.
Custom carpet design: from pattern to strike-off
- Brief. The room or the stair, the quantity, the look and any references: a fabric, a paint chip, a pom from another carpet, a photo of a pattern, a drawing. Through the Design Studio form or by email.
- Rendering. Within about two weeks, a rendering of the design in your colors with the construction, the width and the quote.
- Strike-off. A woven or tufted sample of the actual design in the actual yarns, usually 18 by 18 inches or wider on a large repeat, in 4 to 6 weeks. This is the approval the mill works from; the strike-off guide explains what to check on it.
- Production. 8 to 16 weeks after approval and deposit for broadloom, longer for hand-made. The mill weaves the whole order on one dye lot.
- Delivery and installation. The roll ships from the mill to our installer in the client's city, who seams, stretches and finishes it.
Custom broadloom for a stair and a hall that match
The most common custom carpet request is not a new design; it is a stair runner, a hall and a bound area rug that read as one. Specify them together: the stair runner woven to 27 or 32 inches with finished selvedges, the hall as wall-to-wall or a bound runner from the same roll, the rug cut and bound from the same dye lot with a matching binding. One purchase order for all three is what guarantees the color. The custom size rugs guide covers the binding and sizing side.
What drives the quote
Net pricing goes to approved trade accounts and we do not publish it. What moves it, in order: construction (hand-tufted and tufted custom are the least expensive, hand-loomed and velvet next, Wilton and Axminster the most), fiber (nylon under wool, wool under wool-silk), the number of colors in a woven pattern and quantity against the minimum, since a 40 square yard order on a 100 square yard minimum pays for the loom setup either way.
What we need to start
The quantity in square yards or a plan with dimensions and the stair count, the construction or the look, colors as poms, Pantone, fabric or a paint chip, the width you need, the install date and the ship-to city. Designs created with Interiors are made through Interiors: renderings and strike-offs are produced for the project they are quoted on and are not released to other showrooms.
Questions designers ask
Can a custom size rug be made to order from a custom carpet?
Yes and it is the usual pairing. Once a custom broadloom is woven, any length of it can be cut and bound into rugs in 3 to 5 weeks, so the living room rug, the hall runner and the stair come from the same roll and the same dye lot.
Who installs custom carpet and does the mill ship to the site?
Our installer network installs anywhere in the United States. The roll ships from the mill to the installer or a receiving warehouse in the client's city; it is never installed by the client's own crew unless you ask for that, in which case inspection on arrival becomes theirs.
What is the 70 percent rule for rugs?
A rug should cover about 70 percent of the room's floor, leaving 18 inches of floor at the walls in a standard room. It is the number to use when you are cutting a bound rug from a custom broadloom and want it to read as a rug rather than a wall-to-wall that stopped short.
How much carpet does a 20 by 20 room need?
On 12-foot goods, two 20-foot drops, 40 linear feet, about 53 square yards with one seam; on 15-foot goods, two drops of 15 and 5 feet cut across, closer to 45 square yards.
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