Polyester carpet
Polyester carpet is stain-resistant and soft with rich colour, but it is less resilient than nylon and can mat down in traffic lanes over time. It holds oily soil, so regular oil removal matters more with polyester to keep it from looking worn and gray in walkways.
What it is good at
Polyester takes colour beautifully and feels softer underfoot than nylon at the same price. It also resists water-based staining well, because the fibre itself is not very absorbent.
That combination is why so much builder-grade carpet in newer homes is polyester. For a bedroom or a formal room that sees little traffic, it is a sensible choice.
The oleophilic problem
Polyester is oleophilic — it grabs and holds oily soil. That is the reverse of its water-stain resistance, and it is the property that decides how the carpet ages.
Body oils off bare feet, oils tracked in on shoes, and cooking oil that settles out of the air all bond to the fibre readily. Once that film exists, sand stops falling to the base of the pile and starts riding at the height your foot lands.
This is why traffic lanes in newer homes often look grey long before the carpet is anywhere near worn out. The grey is oil, and the abrasion underneath it is the real damage.
And it does not spring back
Polyester is less resilient than nylon. It matts in walkways and does not recover its set as completely, so crushing shows sooner and stays longer.
That makes the maintenance interval matter more, not less. Oil removal on a real cycle is doing double duty on polyester: it takes away the grey, and it takes away the film that holds the sand doing the grinding.
What it needs
The right pre-treatment. Oily soil needs alkaline chemistry to release it — water alone does nothing to oil, which is why a rental machine passes straight over the exact problem polyester has.
Then a proper acid rinse, because alkaline residue left in the pile is sticky and polyester needs no help attracting soil. And protector, so the fibre has a sacrificial layer.
The follow-up
questions.
It is different rather than worse. Polyester is softer and more resistant to water-based stains; nylon is more resilient and recovers better from crushing. Polyester holds oily soil, so it depends more heavily on being cleaned on schedule.
Almost always oil rather than dirt. Polyester attracts oily soil, that film discolours the fibre directly, and sand sticks to it and grinds. Some of what you see cleans out; whatever has already bloomed does not.
It benefits from it in the areas actually taking abrasion. Protector is the sacrificial layer between the sand and the fibre, and on a fibre that both attracts oil and matts easily, that layer is doing real work.
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