How to Read a Carpet Wear Class Rating

A carpet's wear class rating — light domestic through heavy commercial — describes the traffic level the product has been tested to withstand under standardised wear testing, not a subjective quality grade. Specifying a carpet rated for moderate commercial traffic in a space that actually sees heavy commercial footfall is the single most common cause of premature carpet failure on commercial projects.

Milliken's Contract Weave range is rated for heavy commercial use, which matters specifically in corridors, lobbies and other high-footfall zones where a lower-rated product would show visible wear within one to two years rather than the five-to-seven-year lifecycle a heavy commercial rating is built for.

Architects should confirm wear class against the actual projected footfall for each zone of a project separately — a boardroom and the corridor leading to it often warrant different ratings, and specifying one rating across an entire floor plate usually means over-specifying some areas and under-specifying others.