How we do it

Fitting and budgeting

Over and above the cost of your new flooring, fitting needs to be taken into account as a correctly installed flooring with a decent underlay will preserve your new carpets – keeping them looking and feeling their best for a long time.

A few Do’s and Don’t’s when considering fitting:

• Do take advice so the correct underlay for your chosen carpet and area of use is selected.
• Do remember to take into account additional costs for thresholds and junctions with adjoining carpets
• Do allow for any doors that need trimming to allow for the thickness of the new carpet.
• Don’t get seduced by offers of ‘free fitting and underlay’ – like unicorns and free lunches, they do not exist!

Underlay serves many purposes – the right underlay, correctly installed makes carpets comfortable to walk on whilst protecting the carpet from premature wear. Underlay can also provide sound and, where needed, heat insulation – conversely, if underfloor heating is being used, a Low Tog underlay is needed to avoid over insulating the floor

At Ray Randerson Carpets, from experience, we recommend and use Ball and Young Cloud 9, 9mm Cirrus underlay for most domestic carpets and Cloud 9, 6mm Radiance Low Tog underlay for areas with underfloor heating.

Where Wilton or Axminster carpets are being fitted, Felt and Crumb underlay is the preferred choice offering unparalleled levels of comfort and protection.

In situations where there are uneven floors, levelling the floor may be required – for concrete floors, latex based smoothing compounds can be used to create an even base for the carpet to lie on. On wooden floors it may be prudent to line the floor with ply before carpeting. Either way, you’ll be advised at the time of survey and quoted accordingly. Similarly on boarded floors, lining the floor with a paper membrane prior to fitting the underlay, prevents dust from gaps penetrating the carpet from underneath that can, in some circumstances, create visible lines in the carpet.

Having chosen your perfect carpet, it’s important to be sure it’s fitted perfectly so it looks and feels superb for many years to come. When it comes to underlay and fitting, it’s what you don’t see that counts!