A regular from Ashley Cross was in the Poole showroom last week asking whether wool was worth the extra over a synthetic twist, and it’s a fair question to be asking right now — the trade’s biggest event of the year, the Flooring Show at Harrogate Convention Centre, runs from the 20th to the 22nd of September, and it’s exactly where that kind of answer gets tested against 250-odd brands under one roof.
It’s trade only, so it’s not a day out for customers, but it’s where Flooring Factory sees what’s actually coming into the ranges before committing shelf space to it — new Wilton weaves, updated Stainmaster treatments on the twist piles, and a fair few LVT ranges pushing rigid-core click systems over the old glue-down.
On the carpet side, the difference between a Cormar Wilton and a cheaper tufted twist isn’t just the price tag — it’s pile density and how the yarn’s constructed, and that shows up in how a hallway carpet wears after eighteen months of school shoes and a dog. Underlay matters just as much: a 9mm PU foam at around 11kg density under a heavy-traffic carpet outlasts a thin 7mm every time.
For the older places around Charminster and Southbourne with suspended timber floors, it’s usually LVT that gets asked about, and that means a damp-proof membrane going down first if there’s any doubt about the subfloor, plus 48 hours’ acclimatisation for the planks in the room before anyone clicks a single one into place.
Flooring Factory will be back from Harrogate with a fair idea of what’s worth bringing into the Poole and Bournemouth showrooms this autumn — pop in or have a look at theflooring-factory.co.uk/.