Carpet Underlay
Match the right underlay to your carpet and you’ll enjoy a host of benefits. At QA Flooring Solutions, we’re the UK’s leading flooring solutions company, offering quality flooring underlay for all our customers. From laminate and engineered wood flooring to carpets, we supply them all. But today we’ll focus on finding a good quality underlay for carpets.
Our team knows there’s always room for improvement for carpets through flooring underlay, whether to protect its luxury softness or improve energy efficiency by stopping heat loss and improve overall energy efficiency. You’ll find the right underlay with us.
Top Quality Carpet Underlays For Every Situation
Whether you’re using carpet underlays to enhance a home or meet certain British Standards that set performance, safety, and quality requirements, there’s an underlay for everyone.
The best way to break down the underlay you’re looking for is to start with the traffic your carpet is likely to face. High quality underlay designed for light traffic areas won’t do well in hallways, despite its quality, because the increased demand will simply lead to the underlay breaking down over time.
Understand where the carpet will be laid, and you can consider the best underlay based on traffic levels. After that, you can start considering what additional benefits you would like with your carpet underlay, such as reducing noise transmission or finding a carpet underlay compatible with underfloor heating.
Light Traffic Carpet Underlay
Take a look at our FloorSure range; a light traffic carpet underlay collection that gives maximum comfort, without compromising on quality.
Medium Traffic Carpet Underlay
Our medium-traffic underlays, such as the SpringBack series, are an excellent choice for rooms with medium traffic, such as offices and spare rooms. Made up of a PU underlay with excellent cushioning and compression recovery, this strikes a nice middle ground between comfort underfoot and the defence of your carpet.
High Traffic Carpet Underlay
For high-traffic areas, which are a favourite of commercial properties, take a look at our PowerWalk range of carpet underlays for an example of what you can expect. Or for heavy traffic areas that require that added luxury, try our Pure and SkyWalk ranges. All have a high density that allows them to resist the compression that comes with being walked on constantly, meaning they maintain their form with impressive resilience.
Carpet Underlay FAQs
Our carpet underlays can offer the following benefits depending on what they’re best for:
- Cushioning – One of the most popular benefits of underlay is cushioning. This provides comfort underfoot, and is most commonly associated with our PU foam underlay options.
- Protection – Underlays can prioritise protecting your carpet by acting as a pressure and shock absorber from heavy foot traffic or furniture from the flooring to the underlay. Very useful for owners of luxury carpets.
- Thermal Insulation – Some underlays come with insulating properties (like our Naturlay carpet underlay), whereas some can allow more effective underfloor heating (check out our HeatWave options).
- Reducing noise transmission – Airborne and impact noise can be minimised through the use of a sound reducing underlay.
Carpet underlays are uniquely designed to support carpet flooring. Each flooring type has different pros and cons, and a new underlay is supposed to minimise those cons and enhance its pros.
For carpets, underlays often have to offer support underfoot, given the plush nature of the carpet above. Other key benefits of carpet underlays include compression recovery, insulation and even support for commercial use when carpets will experience extremely high traffic, such as in hotels.
For laminate or wood flooring, underlays can offer similar benefits, but most often have to focus on some of the key drawbacks of laminate and engineered wood – chief amongst them? Noise. A wood or laminate underlay has to be able to stop noise transmission from one room to the next, because impact sound of feet on floor can travel around the home or commercial space if not managed properly. Another key feature of laminate and wood underlays often includes moisture protection against damp solid sub-floors.
The point is, different types of underlay offer specific features to support the main flooring above. Matching your underlay to your flooring is vital if you want to make the most of your new flooring and underlay combination.
Every single one of our carpet underlay products comes with sound reduction capabilities, so take a look at our product range to find one that suits you – focus on their other benefits to find a combination that works for you. However, if we were to shout out a carpet underlay with superior sound reduction, one that is best known for its ability to reduce sound travel in the home, then it would have to be our heavy traffic underlay: SkyWalk Gold.
This high performance PU foam underlay with reinforced paper backing has an exceptional ability to absorb impact sound by up to 46 dB, greatly reducing the way noise travels around your home and making your home a more comfortable, peaceful place to be. If sound reduction is the most important benefit to you, then SkyWalk Gold is the top choice.
Yes. For luxurious new carpets, you want an underlay that will not only retain the feel of the carpet but keep it looking like new flooring for longer.
Our Pure range of carpet underlay is as indulgent as it is luxurious. Made from the highest-grade PU foam, it feels great underfoot and has excellent compression recovery. This is one of our most popular types of carpet underlay, but depending on the thicknesses of your carpet and carpet underlay, it may result in an overly soft and uncomfortable feel. Consult our team to ensure our Pure range is right for you.
Our CombiFelt Acoustic carpet underlay gives a firm but truly plush feel underfoot and is widely used with Axminster and quality twist carpets in luxury settings. This is the best underlay for luxury carpets with high thickness. This is because the density is higher, ensuring your carpet underlay can take most of the pressure.
Our underlays are guaranteed for the life of the carpet, but how long underlay lasts ultimately depends on several factors:
- Carpet type – Choose an underlay that balances the density and resilience of your carpet. A thick carpet with low density requires a firmer underlay to provide adequate support; combining two soft layers can cause over-compression, uneven wear, and reduced durability.
- Traffic levels – Foot traffic is the main thing that wears down an underlay. The health of your underlay depends on choosing the right level of density to resist wear – think about the traffic in each room and get a suitable underlay.
- Maintenance – Cleaning and caring for the carpet can take a lot of stress off the carpet underlay.