There are hundreds of choices carpet choices out there! How does one decide?

Whether you are carpeting a room, a home or an office, you will find a vast array of colors, piles and styles when you go looking for your new carpet. It's hard to know where to start.

Think about one room at a time. You may be able to save some money by buying the same carpet for every room, but at first consider each room separately. Is it a high traffic room? Or do you rarely use it? Will children be playing in this room? Or will it mostly be adults. Is this a room where you often eat or drink? Obviously, rooms with high traffic, children or food & drink, will need an easy to clean type of carpet that won't show stains so much. This is not the place for expensive white carpet, no matter how pretty it might be.

On the other hand, you may go ahead and risk an expensive white carpet in a formal dining room. If so, you will want to choose a carpet that is easy to clean. Unless you buy wool carpet, you may want to treat it with some kind of stain repellent to keep it fresher longer. Wool carpet naturally resists staining, but it is often more expensive to buy. It isn't stain-proof, but you may find it easier to remove spills from good wool carpets than from cheaper fibers.

There is a fabulous web site that offers tons of information and advice on carpet and rugs. Go to carpetrug.org where you will find dozens of articles and tons of information on choosing carpets and rugs. There's even an interactive color selection program that shows a photo of a room and you can click to change the color and style of the carpet to get a sense of what it will look like. Nifty, huh? If you don't see what you want, keep browsing. There are lots of sites offering these interactive selection graphics to help you decide on your new carpet!

About this author

Carly Mettarod is an interior decorator. She starts with the carpet and works her way up from there to design a room. You can read more articles about carpet at Mind Carpet