In the industry, wall-to-wall carpet is known as "broadloom carpet." Carpets and rugs over 6 by 9 feet qualify as broadloom, a reference to the looms once used to manufacture wider-than-normal rugs. Today, most broadloom carpet is sold in 12-foot widths.

Carpets today differ in how they are made. More than 90% of today's carpet is tufted by machines that are like huge sewing machines. Fitted with several hundred needles, these machines operate at extremely high speeds to stitch rows of face yarn tufts to a synthetic fabric, called the "primary backing."

During tufting, a mechanical "looper" catches the yarn to create loops, resulting in a "loop-pile" carpet. To make a "cut-pile" carpet, blades shear off the loops, leaving yarn ends standing up straight, like a grass lawn. A "cut-and-loop" carpet has a combination of both intact and cut loops.

Unless yarns are pre-colored, they're dyed. Then the primary backing is coated with latex adhesive and reinforced with a secondary backing, normally made of polypropylene. Some carpets, notably commercial varieties, may have a resilient cushion attached to this backing.

Broadloom carpet is produced by other methods, too. A small percentage, less than 3%, is made on a loom that weaves face and backing yarns together. Although woven carpets have no actual backing fabric, a coating of latex is applied to the underside. Some commercial carpet tiles or modules (normally 18 by 18 inches) are made through a fusion-bonding process, where yarn fibers are injected into an adhesive-coated backing.