CARPET AND VINYL SEAMS

Chuck Allen, Floors To Go Sales Professional

In an ideal flooring world every room would be either 12 or 15 feet wide, where every installation would be seamless and easy to install. Instead we live in a world where rooms come in all shapes and sizes. Just when you think you have seen them all you walk into a house or business and see something new. I have measured rooms that are in the shapes of triangles, circles, trapezoids and shapes that have no names. The idea people want their homes to be different from their neighbors has contributed to this trend. While making odd shaped and sized rooms makes your house unique it also adds a challenge. Considering that the majority of roll goods flooring such as carpet and sheet vinyl comes in 12 foot. Some carpet comes in 15 foot goods and some vinyl in 13’2” goods. This being the case like it or not there will be seams.

Take a look around your room almost every item that is made of fabric has seams, your shirt, your couch, your curtains. Some seams are more noticeable than others and this is due to how they were sewn, type of material and placement. So the same holds true for flooring. Our professional installers strive to do the best they can to make that seam invisible but this is not always possible. Let’s take a look at what helps to hide that seam.

The seaming process of carpet is done by cutting the edges of the carpet to match and then using a carpet seam iron and seam tape to adhere the carpet together. This process has taken the place of the old hand sewn seams. For vinyl again the edges are cut to match, adhesive applied to the back side and a seam sealer used on the top to complete the seam. While this sounds very simplistic that is the basis of each seam.

The material you chose will have a huge factor on if seams are visible or not. If you chose a thick plush or frieze style carpet the seams will be much easier to hide and a lot less visible due to the fibers being able to mesh and blend together to hide the seam. Short knap or loop style carpets such as berber, commercial or an economy grade plush will be very difficult to hide seams in. This is due to the lack of fibers standing up to mesh together and camouflage the seam. For vinyl if you chose a style with no pattern line, such as grout lines or wood grains, it is almost certain that you will see this seam. The key for vinyls is hiding the seam in a pattern line and this will help but does not always promise an invisible seam.

Placement is a key factor in making that pesky seam disappear. When we look at seam placement we look at several things. Furniture placement, if we can hide the seam under a bed, couch or other piece of large furniture it helps camouflage it in a room. The whole out of sight out of mind idea works here. Another thing we look for is traffic patterns; we do not want to place a seam across a major foot traffic area unless there is no other way to do so. Doing so could cause unnecessary wear and cause the seam to show up. One other consideration is lighting. Sometimes a seam will be invisible at one point of the day but show up at a different time due to either the sun highlighting it or shadowing it. Putting a seam in direct sunlight will often times expose it at certain times of the day.

Seams are a fact of life in almost all fabrics. We at Floors To Go try our best to make sure you are aware of when and where seams will be necessary for your floor installation. Hopefully this will give you the home owner an idea why you may see those seams and what we do to try and prevent that from happening. If you have any questions please feel free to ask your Floors To Go sales professionals that’s what we are here for.