People walk into the showroom with a brand name and a good feeling about it. A neighbor's carpet, a manufacturer they saw in a magazine, a product a contractor swore by. That is a perfectly reasonable place to start, and it is not where the decision should end, because every brand on our floor makes products at several price points, and the name on the box tells you far less than the specification inside it.
This is a straight account of the manufacturers we carry at 900 Industrial Parkway, what each one is known for, and how to compare two products from different brands without being sold a logo.
How to read a brand, before the list
A flooring brand is a range of products, not one product. The same manufacturer will make a light-duty polyester carpet for a rental and a dense nylon for a busy family home, and both will carry the same name. What decides how a floor wears is the specification: fiber and density in carpet, wear layer and core in vinyl plank, the AC rating and edge treatment in laminate. A good brand gets you a consistent product and a warranty that means something. It does not get you the right floor for the room unless someone checks the specification against how the room is used.
We covered the carpet side of that in choosing carpet that still looks right in year eight, and the hard-surface side in laminate vs luxury vinyl plank.
Karastan
Karastan is the premium end of carpet, and has been for the best part of a century. It is known for patterned and textured carpets with a genuinely different look from a plain cut pile, and for wool and high-grade nylon constructions that hold their appearance for a long time. It is the brand we point to when a client wants a formal living room, a dining room or a primary bedroom to look considered rather than just covered.
What it is not is the budget answer for four bedrooms and a hallway. It earns its price in the rooms where the carpet is part of the design.
Mohawk
Mohawk is the largest flooring manufacturer there is, and the two lines we sell most of are SmartStrand and RevWood.
SmartStrand is a triexta carpet, and the reason to buy it is that the stain resistance is built into the fiber rather than sprayed on as a treatment that wears off. For a house with dogs, children or both, that is the practical difference. It is a little less resilient underfoot than a top nylon and considerably better with spills. We discussed where it fits in pet-friendly flooring.
RevWood is Mohawk's waterproof laminate, and it is the product that changed our answer on laminate in kitchens. A conventional wood-core laminate swells at the seams if water sits on it. RevWood is built to shrug that off, and it looks and feels like a wood floor in a way vinyl plank has to work harder to match. It is a genuine option for a busy family living area where you want a hard wear surface.
Mannington
Mannington is a family-owned American manufacturer with a long history, and it makes laminate, luxury vinyl and hardwood. Its strength is realism. The embossing on a Mannington laminate or vinyl plank follows the printed grain, so the floor looks like wood from a standing height and feels like it underfoot. Its luxury vinyl ranges cover both rigid-core and flexible constructions, which matters because they suit different subfloors.
TRUCOR
TRUCOR is a rigid-core luxury vinyl plank line, and it is the product we specify most for kitchens, entries, laundries and open-plan main floors. Rigid core means the plank does not telegraph small dips in the subfloor the way a flexible plank does, and it stays put through the temperature swing a Willamette Valley house goes through between February and August. The wear layers run thick enough for a household with dogs and a front door that gets used, which is the thing to check on any vinyl plank, whatever it is called.
Hallmark Floors
Hallmark makes hardwood and luxury vinyl, and it is best known for wide-plank engineered hardwood with a hand-finished look. We carry hardwood through the showroom for clients who want the real thing, and Hallmark is the range we reach for when the brief is a wide plank with character rather than a uniform factory board.
DH Floors
DH Floors is a hardwood specialist, and it sits alongside Hallmark as the other hardwood name on our floor. It is worth seeing the two side by side, because the finishes and the plank widths differ in ways that matter more than the brand does.
Phenix
Phenix is a Georgia carpet manufacturer, and its products are built around solution-dyed fibers, where the color runs all the way through the strand rather than being applied to the surface. That makes them very hard to stain and very resistant to fading in a south-facing room, which is a real consideration in the few months a year Oregon gets strong sun. It is a strong value choice for bedrooms and family rooms where you want durability without paying for a designer name.
Cambria
Cambria is the quartz we use for counters, and it is the one brand on this list that is not a floor. It is a family-owned American manufacturer, its slabs are made in Minnesota, and it is known for consistent color, a deep design range and a manufacturer warranty that reflects confidence in the product. Quartz counters are one of the four things we specialize in, and we wrote about what to know before choosing one in quartz counters: what to know.
Comparing two products honestly
When you are standing between two samples from two brands, here is what to compare.
- Carpet: density and twist, not softness. Bend the sample back over your finger; if you can see the backing easily, it is a low-density carpet and it will show a traffic lane. Check the fiber type and whether the stain resistance is built in or applied.
- Luxury vinyl plank: wear layer thickness in mils, and whether the core is rigid or flexible. Two planks can look identical and behave completely differently under a dog's claws.
- Laminate: the AC wear rating, the edge treatment, and whether it is a water-resistant construction. Then knock on it. A hollow, tinny sound in the showroom is a warning.
- Hardwood: engineered or solid, the thickness of the wear veneer if engineered, and the finish. For a house in a wet climate, engineered is usually the better-behaved choice.
- Any of them: the warranty. Read what it actually covers and what it excludes, because a long headline number with a short list of exclusions is common.
Why the showroom matters
None of this can be done properly from a website. We keep full-size samples of all of these ranges at the showroom in Newberg, and we bring them to your house for the estimate so you can see them in your own light, on your own subfloor, next to your own trim. That is the only way to tell a good product from a good photograph.
Norman's Floor Covering has been installing floors on Portland's Westside since 1978, licensed with the Oregon Construction Contractors Board under CCB 103259, with a ten year labor warranty on every install. The showroom at 900 Industrial Parkway is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and in-home estimates are free across Newberg, Sherwood, Tigard, Tualatin, Wilsonville, Beaverton, McMinnville, Lake Oswego, West Linn, King City and Woodburn. If you would rather try a floor in your room first, our room visualizer puts real products into a photo of your space.
