Selecting Carpet Padding

Carpet padding can make all the difference for your floors. Having good padding extends the life of your carpet, and provides cushion comfort to your step. It cannot be overstated how much a quality carpet pad can changed the feel of room.

In this guide, we go over the basics of what carpet pad is, the different types, and information about those different types. Like all purchasing decisions, selecting the right pad is a trade-off of economic value versus benefit.

What is Carpet Pad?

To explain what carpet pad is, let’s start with its purpose.

Purpose of Carpet Pad

The purpose of carpet pad is to add comfort to your floors and extend the life of the carpet. The comfort pad provides can be significant.

Pad gives your carpet a more substantial and thicker, yet softer, richer feel. It also extends the life of carpet. The cushion the pad provides to your feet also absorbs impact and weight which, without pad, would be directly expended compressing your carpet fibers. For example, thinking about hammering a nail into a 2x4 that is on top of a large cushion. The cushion would absorb some of your hammering force, making it harder to drive the nail in. The life extension aspect of pad is significant, which is why nearly every carpet warranties requires a specific padding.

Cushion comfort and carpet life extension are primarily what pad is there for. However, there are additional, concomitant benefits to pad as well.

Pad acts as an insulator for your floors, reducing the warm air lost through your floors in the winter, and reducing cool air lost in summer. Pad also makes carpet easier to keep clean and maintenance. It increases airflow from below when vacuuming the carpet. Finally, pad impacts the acoustic characteristics of a room with its property to absorb sound. You don’t have to worry about noisy footsteps on padded carpet (especially for the people in the room below!).

Carpet padding is not without drawbacks. If your carpet experiences a large liquid spill, the carpet pad can become soiled if it doesn’t have a moisture barrier layer. This can cause stains to reappear after cleaning if that initial spill was not taken care of promptly. This is more so an issue with typical rebond pad when soils are left to sit. Many pads and even carpet backings come with moisture barriers for this reason.

Types of Carpet Pad

Rebond pad is the rugged and economical pad of choice. This pad is made from 100% recycled foam from the industrial foam making process.

• Rebond Foam Pad

  This is the most common pad type of pad due it’s great cost-to-performance benefit. If you have carpet, it’s probably what you’re walking on! Rebond pad is made from bonded polyurethane. It’s usually called “rebond” because it’s nearly always completely made from recycled foam and by-products from industrial foam making processes. Rebond pad is durable and highly economical.

Memory foam pad is made from froth polyurethane foam, the foam of choice that’s widely used for bedding, furniture, and automotive padding. It’s highly durable and comfortable and many different varieties are manufactured with different proprietary blends. It frequently has a moisture barrier layer.

• Memory Foam

  Memory foam is the king of comfort. It comes at an increased cost compared to rebond. Memory foam is froth polyurethane foam with proprietary additives to give it the proper comfort characteristics. This type of pad is highly durable and long lasting. It almost always comes with a moisture barrier. In many cases, it will extend the warranty of your carpet if you’re installing carpet and memory foam pad made by the same manufacturer.

Fiber pad (left) shown next to carpet (right). Fiber pads are dense and used for commercial and Berber carpets.

• Fiber Pad

  Fiber pad is a thinner, but extra dense pad. It’s made from either natural fibers, synthetic fiber, or a blend. It’s common to see these made of wool, polyester, and polypropylene. They are primary for use in commercial carpeting and Berber carpets. Fiber pad is highly durable and long-lasting. Fiber pads are generally not suitable for use as your typical residential pad due to rebond being a better use case for most home carpets.

Carpet Pad Weights

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Bottom Line

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