Flooring · Carpet
How long does carpet last?
The Carpet and Rug Institute's own line is that carpet "properly selected, installed, and maintained lasts up to 10 years or longer." Shaw's residential broadloom paper runs 20 years. The reason both can be true is the definition of wear: Shaw's abrasion term is losing more than 10% of the pile fibre by weight, and matting, crushing and the flattened traffic lane — the reasons carpet actually comes up — are named exclusions.
Updated
The gap: warranty ends at 20 years; typical service life ends around 10+ years. The paper runs 5 years past the typical service life — coverage that long is almost always prorated, thinning well before it ends. Warranty document (Shaw, checked 2026-08-27)
Typical service life: 10+ years
CRI's phrasing is that carpet "properly selected, installed, and maintained lasts up to 10 years or longer" — every one of those conditions is doing work in that sentence. The association's own school life-cycle study assumes carpet "has a usable life span of eleven (11) years," and its maintenance research found neglected carpet pulled up "after just a third of their design life or even earlier." The 15 here only bounds the drawing; a builder-grade carpet in a hallway can be finished in half the figure.
Tier 2 · trade / standards literature Range from The Carpet and Rug Institute — Facility-Specific Considerations, checked 2026-08-27.
Carpet's weather is what the weather tracks indoors. Wet-season mud and winter road salt are abrasive once they dry in the pile, which is why entry lanes age at several times the rate of the room behind them; humid climates additionally slow drying after cleaning, and a cushion that stays damp is where odour and mould problems start. Sun exposure is the other climate variable, and fading from it sits outside every warranty term.
What the warranty paper actually says
Shaw (20 Year Limited Residential Broadloom Carpet Warranty) publishes a 20-year limited, non-prorated, transferable, conditional warranty. The 20 years is non-prorated and includes reasonable labor, stairs included — better than most carpet paper on both counts. The narrow part is what wear means: abrasion is "Carpet will lose no more than 10% of the pile face fiber, by weight," and texture retention is "Not exhibit significant twist loss or loss of texture from normal foot traffic." The exclusions then take back the reasons carpet is actually replaced. Matting is listed as not covered; crushing from furniture, including the impressions left by furniture legs, is not covered; and the document states outright that "The texture of any carpet will change to some degree in heavy traffic areas. Such conditions constitute normal wear and tear and are not covered by this warranty." Carpet on stairs without an approved pad is excluded, a pad meeting FHA/HUD requirements and a CRI-105 installation are conditions of coverage, and it transfers to a second owner only if both parties can produce proof of purchase.
The warranty document itself , checked 2026-08-27.
What shortens it
- Traffic-lane crushing and matting, where the fibre is all still present — which is precisely why the warranty does not count it
- Skipped vacuuming: dry soil is abrasive, and CRI's own research found neglected carpet replaced after a third of its design life
- Stairs, where every step lands on the nose of one tread and where most carpet paper narrows, conditions or disappears
- The wrong cushion — too thick or too soft a pad flexes the backing, and a pad outside the warranty's requirements ends coverage on its own
- Sunlight through unshaded glass, which fades the pile and is excluded from the term by name
- Spills left to sit — stain resistance is a head start on cleaning, not a shield
Signs of wear to look for
- A flattened, faintly shiny path from doorway to doorway that vacuuming no longer lifts
- Yarn tips untwisting so the pile reads frizzy or blurred close up, while the same carpet under a bed looks new
- Seams and edges fraying, or a run unravelling along a seam line
- Ripples and wrinkles standing up across the room, which then wear faster wherever they flex
- Backing visible at stair noses and pivot points, with the pile worn down around it
- An odour that comes back within days of cleaning, which is usually the cushion rather than the pile
Other flooring materials
- Solid hardwood 100+ yrs
- Engineered wood 50+ yrs
- Laminate 15–25 yrs
- Luxury vinyl plank about 25 yrs
- Ceramic and porcelain tile 75+ yrs
- Sheet vinyl about 25 yrs