I received a fax from a retail dealer the other day who has a problem with a Berber carpet made with a soft nylon fiber. His customer is complaining of dark areas in the traffic lanes in three bedrooms, a living room and hall, a total of 93 yards of carpet. The carpet was installed in late 2003 and the complaint was filed in the spring of 2004. The dealer says he has been selling Berber carpets for 20 years and has never encountered this problem.

The carpet was inspected and the report stated that the dark areas were in the traffic areas, entrances to rooms and around the beds. The consumer has tried to clean the carpet several times to no avail. The dark areas look dark from one direction and lighter when viewed from the opposite direction, he states. The loops in the traffic lanes are laying in the opposite direction from loops out of the traffic and complaint areas, he went on to say.

Here’s a case where you have to make an evaluation for the dealer with the information you’ve got. First of all soft fibers are finer denier (thinner) nylon fibers. The fact that they are thinner makes them softer. It’s still nylon, with the performance characteristics of nylon but being soft changes the physical characteristics of the product being produced with it. In cut pile configurations made with fine denier nylon there is more fiber and it normally will have more and tighter twist. This makes the yarn system as resilient as ever but it has a softer “hand” or feel. When you put this fiber into a loop pile construction the performance characteristics for that product are going to change. Residential loop pile carpets generally don’t get a lot of twist. In a Berber the yarn is going to be bigger and fatter. With the fiber being soft and supple less twist would mean less resilience in the yarn, which would allow it to compress and shade. As a result this type of carpet could experience more matting, compression and pile direction change. When this happens there is also a light reflectance value change and when the carpet is viewed from different directions it will shade, or look darker or lighter depending on the vantage point from which it is being viewed.

Berbers with the softer nylon fibers will perform differently and look different than what you may have been used to experiencing with polypropylene or heavier denier nylon products - these products are heavier and more course and will feel rougher and thicker. The soft fiber gives a much better feel underfoot, especially if you are walking on it with bare feet. A very nice comfy feel to be sure but there will be shading and high-lighting with this fiber in the yarn system. The same thing is going to happen with a loop pile Berber. Remember a rule of thumb, to gain something in a carpet sometimes you have to give something up. In this case the gain is a very soft piece of carpet, the loss is the stiffness and course yarn that didn’t shade.

What this dealer is experiencing is not a defect. There is nothing wrong with the carpet because what it is doing is normal for the yarn system used. Is this then a good idea? Since this style carpet will show some shading you may want to explain this to the customer. As a comparison there are other styles of carpet that will shade, these are not soft fiber product. Velvet styles and plush carpets have always shown shading, it’s the nature of the product. Sure these products have generated complaints but mostly because the consumer was not made aware of the nature of the product. They are not defective, this is the way they look when you walk on them and use them and it is how they are designed. The difference we have to take into consideration in this case is that most people don’t expect a loop pile carpet to shade. However, when you change the characteristics of the product that you’ve come to know by using a soft fiber you change the way it performs and looks when it is subjected to traffic.

The other issue in this case is that the consumer has cleaned the carpet several times in an attempt to eliminate this condition. In the process, and we can only assume in this case, she may have altered the yarn with aggressive efforts, changing the way light reflects off of it, or even left some cleaning residue in the carpet that’s turning dark. At any rate the carpet is not defective, it is performing up to the standards and characteristics to which it was designed and constructed, which are very different from what you may have been used to. Somebody in marketing thought this was a good idea without giving any thought to how the carpet would look when performing. Some changes would need to be made in the construction of the yarn to eliminate this issue, which would also increase the price, which would give you something else to complain about. Bottom line is the condition being experienced is normal for this particular product.