What are the advantages of using underlay when carpeting?

While there are many exceptional flooring solutions available for homes around the UK, there’s no doubt that when it comes to luxury comfort, wall-to-wall carpeting can deliver. Carpets can make a considerable difference to the way living spaces both look and feel, but there are more decisions to make when making a purchase than just the colour and pile you’d like. In far too many cases, homeowners overlook the many benefits that underlay can deliver beneath a carpet and the crucial functions it can perform if correctly installed.

Carpet underlay has multiple purposes designed to ensure your brand-new carpet lasts longer and your home stays warmer. In the following sections, we’ll take a look at some of the key benefits of adding an underlay to your carpet installation.

Creating added warmth

Today’s quality underlay does much more than simply create a soft and uninterrupted finish to your carpeted floor – it can also keep the rooms that it’s installed in far warmer. Many premium quality carpeting will come hessian backed, with products featuring pin-prick holes from the specialist weaving process employed to fashion them. These minute holes enable cold air to enter upwards through the boards of wooden floors particularly. However, when you use an underlay, it will provide an effective barrier between the floor below and your carpet, which can mitigate this creeping cold from seeping into rooms.

Noise reducing properties

Having cushioning underlay can also help to cut down the noise of footsteps walking around on the flooring. This makes underlay an exceptionally useful inclusion when carpet is fitted on the upper floors of your house, or when your home is an apartment with others living below you.

It can also work to reduce any noise that travels upwards through your ceilings in lower rooms, making for far quieter and more peaceful bedrooms upstairs. This can be ideal when someone wants to watch television in the living room late at night without disturbing sleepers in the rooms situated above.

Additional comfort underfoot

The comfort level of your carpet is likely the reason why you selected it as your flooring solution in the first place. However, while you may have ordered the softest carpet available, if you try to lay it straight on either a concrete or solid stone floor, you’ll find it feels far harder than you thought it would.

Underlay delivers an extra soft cushion for your new carpet to be positioned on and fitted, making it far softer and springier under your feet. It can also help to even out any bumps and lumps present beneath the floor to create a smoother appearance once your carpet has been laid.

Extended life and a return on your investment

While homeowners that install underlay can enjoy all these benefits, there is one more advantage to be gained. Underlay will also lengthen your carpet’s lifespan, protecting its underside from damage with its cushion-like qualities. If these benefits appeal to you, ensure you opt for underlay the next time you fit new carpet.