How carpet is made

A tufting machine punches rows of looped yarn into a backing, and that is how most carpet in homes is made.

stations: 6
things upstream: 31
raw sources: 8
steps from the ground: 8

The short version

Most domestic carpet is tufted. A tufting machine pushes loops of yarn through a fabric backing, and the loops are left as they are or sheared into a cut pile. A second backing is bonded underneath for stability. Nylon and polypropylene make up an estimated 90 percent of the commercial market.

Extrude the fiber

Molten nylon or polypropylene is forced through spinneret holes to make long continuous filaments. Wool, by comparison, has to be sheared, washed and spun.

Goes in
Nylon Polypropylene
Twist and dye the yarn

Filaments are twisted into carpet yarn and dyed. Nylon can be dyed after spinning or colored in its molten state, while polypropylene is hard to dye. Wool is often blended with nylon to improve durability.

Goes in
Wool yarn Water
Tuft into the backing

A tufting machine drives yarn through a primary backing with rows of needles, leaving loops on the surface. Cutting the loops makes a plush cut pile, and leaving them makes a Berber loop pile.
Bond on a second backing

A second backing, a woven hessian or a man-made equivalent, is bonded to the first backing with adhesive. It locks the tufts in place and stabilizes the carpet.

Goes in
Adhesive
Shear the pile

Blades trim the pile to an even height. Shearing the loops also gives different textures.
Roll for shipping

The carpet is inspected, trimmed at the edges and wound onto rolls.

End of the lineCarpet Next it goes into car.

Worth repeating

The oldest surviving knotted carpet is the Pazyryk carpet, excavated from a frozen tomb in Siberia and dated to the 5th to the 3rd century BC.
The most common wool blend in modern carpet is 80 percent wool to 20 percent synthetic fiber.