<h3>Benefits of Protecting your Floor with Carpet or Rugs</h3>

Having a hard time deciding what type of flooring to put into your home. Below is a list provided by the Carpet and Rug Institute on the Benefit of Carpets and Rugs.

Provides warmth and comfort
Carpet provides thermal resistance, or R-value. In colder climates or seasons, it retains warm air longer, an energy conservation benefit. Carpet provides a comfortable environment in which to work and gives a space an overall warmer feeling.
Adds beauty and style

You can choose from many thousands of carpet styles and colors. That means you can choose vibrant colors or heavier patterns and textures to represent a company’s corporate culture, or you can use a neutral foundation and calming colors to provide a good environment for healing or learning.

Cushions slips and falls
Carpet is ideal for cushioning our footsteps, reducing slips and falls and minimizing injuries when falls do occur. Carpet provides safety protection for everyone, but it is particularly helpful for youngsters at schools or the elderly at such facilities as hospitals or nursing homes.
Reduces noise

Many offices today have open area systems where phone conversations and frequent employee interactions can be distracting. Carpet helps increase employee productivity by absorbing sounds. Adding cushion beneath a carpet reduces noise even further. Carpet also works as a sound barrier between floors by helping to block sound transmission to spaces below. Plus, carpet on stairs helps mask the sound of constant foot traffic.

Maintains appearance
Carpet will maintain its life and beauty for many years when properly cleaned and maintained. However, it is important to follow carpet manufacturer’s cleaning recommendations for the type of carpet and application you have. Keep your carpet looking great over time by following these additional steps:

* Preventative maintenance — protect your investment before problems occur.
* Vacuuming — the single most effective way to keep carpet clean.
* Spot and stain removal — use CRI seal of Approval products.
* Professional deep cleaning — a periodic must.

Improves indoor air quality
Carpet helps improve IAQ by trapping allergens and other particles so they can be vacuumed away. Plus, carpet is the lowest VOC emitter of common floor choices, and requires fewer cleaning chemicals than other floor coverings.

Saves money over time
The sum of the initial cost of carpet, plus the maintenance costs over the total time of the life of the carpet, is usually less than hard surface flooring. Plus, cleaning carpet is less labor intensive. A survey of commerical buildings that had maintenance programs for hard surfaces and carpet demonstrated that carpet cost less to maintain. The study found that hard surface floors require two and one-half times more cleaning time than carpet, and cleaning supplies were about seven times more expensive for vinyl floors than for carpeted floors. While upfront purchase and installation costs are more expensive for carpet than hard flooring, carpet expenditures prove to be more cost-effective over the full life cycle of the product.