Carpet

We stock carpet for Oahu homes and commercial jobs, and you can walk in and put your hands on it. Our showroom is at 1130 N Nimitz Hwy A-121, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm. Bring your room measurements and we will work out what you actually need.

What we carry

Two lines, chosen for two different jobs.

Mohawk residential broadloom — stretch-in carpet in SmartStrand and SmartStrand Silk (triexta) and EverStrand (recycled polyester). Styles include Casual Elegance, Gentle Approach, Sweet Reflection II, Lakewood Drive I, Sculptured Touch, Weston Manor, Dynamic Quality II and Natural Decoration, with berber constructions in the Casual Elegance range.

Aladdin Commercial glue-down — Rule Breaker 20 and Scholarship II 26, built for offices, common areas, corridors and anywhere that takes constant traffic and needs to sit flat without a stretch.

If you need something we do not have on the floor, ask. Most of the Mohawk range can be ordered.

Carpet in a Honolulu condo: usually the simpler approval

This is the part most people do not find out until they are already committed.

Many Oahu buildings regulate hard-surface flooring far more tightly than carpet. At Hawaiki Tower, for example, the House Rules acoustic specification (Exhibit D, revised 9 February 2011) applies to "the installation of rigid flooring other than padded carpeting", and sets field impact ratings of FIIC 55 in living areas and FIIC 45 in entries, kitchens and bathrooms — with testing by an acoustical consultant at the owner's expense. The same document sets a minimum 40 oz density for carpet pad.

Read that carefully: put down padded carpet and you are largely outside the rigid-flooring specification. Put down plank or tile and you may be booking an acoustic consultant.

Other buildings are stricter still. Honolulu Park Place requires IIC-65 and prior written board approval, with installation without it treated as a violation. Others have no flooring rule at all.

Two things to know before you buy anything: requirements differ building by building and are amended over time, so confirm yours with your AOAO or managing agent rather than relying on what a neighbor did. And note that IIC and FIIC are not the same measurement — IIC is a laboratory rating from a product sheet, FIIC is measured in your unit after installation. A product that passes one can fail the other.

If you do want a hard surface in a building with an acoustic requirement, that is a different conversation and underlayment does the work. We are the exclusive Hawaii distributor for Regupol acoustic underlayment.

Humidity, not cold, is what wears carpet out here

Mainland carpet advice is written around winter heating and dry indoor air. Oahu is the opposite problem. Warm, humid air sitting in a closed-up house is what causes trouble, and it usually starts underneath the carpet rather than in it.

That is why fiber choice matters here. Both SmartStrand (triexta) and EverStrand (PET polyester) are synthetic and hydrophobic — they do not absorb moisture the way wool does, which matters in a climate where nothing ever fully dries out. Wool is a beautiful carpet and a questionable choice for a ground-floor Oahu room that gets salt air through open louvers.

The pad matters as much as the carpet. In humid conditions a cheap pad is where mildew starts, and it is the part nobody sees until the carpet is lifted. If your building specifies a pad density, that number is a minimum and not a target.

Ground-floor and slab-on-grade rooms deserve a moisture check before anything goes down. Concrete releases moisture for a long time, and Oahu slabs are rarely as dry as they look.

Residential stretch-in or commercial glue-down?

For most homes — bedrooms, family rooms, stairs — stretch-in broadloom over a good pad is the right answer. It is more comfortable underfoot, it is quieter, and it is what the Mohawk range is built for.

For offices, rental turnovers, corridors, lobbies and anywhere with rolling loads or heavy foot traffic, glue-down commercial carpet is the better call. It will not ripple, it handles chair castors, and it is far easier to patch a damaged section without redoing a whole room. That is what the Aladdin Commercial lines are for.

Buying for a job rather than a house? See contractor pricing.

Come and see it, or get it measured

Carpet color is close to impossible to judge from a screen. Room lighting on Oahu — bright reflected daylight, often through greenery — changes how a beige reads more than people expect. Take samples home and look at them at the time of day you actually use the room.

We serve Oahu island-wide, from Kakaako and Waikiki through Hawaii Kai, Manoa, Kailua, Mililani and Ewa Beach.

Book a free flooring estimate, visit the showroom, or call (808) 210-4807. If you are comparing carpet against other options, start with all flooring.