Best Places to Buy Carpet
Last updated May 2019
You’ll want to shop for carpet at stores where you can get good advice, good selection, quality installation services, and honest business practices—at reasonable prices. Our ratings of area stores will help you find them.
We asked Checkbook and Consumer Reports subscribers, plus other randomly selected individuals, to rate carpet stores and installation companies they had used as “inferior,” “adequate,” or “superior” on several questions. Our Ratings Tables show the percent of each company’s surveyed customers who rated it “superior” on each question. (Our Ratings Tables list all companies that received at least 10 ratings for either carpet sales or installation services. Click here for more information on our customer surveys and other research methods.)
Variety and Layout
Most stores display wall-to-wall carpet samples on racks or in sample books, while carpet remnants and rugs are hung from racks, stacked, or stored in rolls around the store. It’s important that stores have good lighting and enough room to lay out a rug or remnant so you can see what it looks like on the floor. Our Ratings Tables report how surveyed consumers rated stores on “ease of looking at products.”
Convenient Services
Shop at stores that let you take home carpet samples and/or area rugs; most stores offer this service. Also find out if the store will bind carpets for area rugs or arrange for custom-made
rugs. Some carpet stores also offer carpet or rug cleaning, repairs, appraisals, restoration, or design services.
Advice
You’re likely to have many questions at a carpet shop. Our Ratings Tables report how stores were rated for “advice on choice and use of products and related questions.” As you can see, some stores got very low ratings on this question.
Reliability
We also asked customers to rate companies on “reliability (doing what was promised, standing behind products, delivering on time, etc.).” The portion of surveyed customers rating stores “superior” ranged from less than 40 percent to more than 90 percent.
Our Ratings Tables also show counts of complaints we gathered from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for a recent three-year period. Click here for more information on reported complaint counts.
Installation Service
Unless you’re a committed do-it-yourselfer, you’ll want to have professionals install your carpet, and almost all stores that sell wall-to-wall offer installation services. Some use their own employees; others contract out.
Installation problems are among the most common source of carpet buyers’ complaints. A poor job, such as inadequate stretching of carpet, or uneven, bumpy, or loose seams, can ruin the appearance and durability of even an expensive carpet.
Our Ratings Tables show what percentage of surveyed customers rated each company’s installation service “superior” for “doing work properly,” “promptness,” and “overall quality.” Several companies were rated “superior” on some of these criteria by 50 percent or fewer of surveyed customers, but others were rated “superior” more than 90 percent of the time.
Warranty
The quality of a store’s warranty is a good indicator of the reliability of its sales and installation operations. Most carpet stores and installers offer written warranties on carpet installation. Most warranties are valid for a year from the date of installation, but some are valid longer (up to three years, in some cases). Some explicitly disclaim responsibility for visible seams so long as the installation has been performed in a workmanlike manner in accordance with industry standards, but don’t assume visible seams are covered—even in warranties that lack this explicit disclaimer.