Using Carpets in Rimworld

How do carpets work?

When you place a carper on the floor, it overrides the previous flooring. It’s interesting to note that removing the new floor will not reveal the previous floor under it, but revert to the natural one underneath.

So, generally speaking, carpets can be used if you like them; alternatively, if your colony in a resource-starved location, like ice, then you probably don’t want to waste precious steel on flooring when you can grow some cotton, make carpets out of it and use it for that purpose.

But I use all my cotton for clothing!

If your colony in a lower temperature region, you should prefer woolen clothing or Devil Strand for protection.

Another thing is that when you’ve got so much cotton, you can make stuff out of it, such as the said carpets, chairs, or a billiards table, and sale it. By trading cotton chairs you can sometimes get resources or rare bionics. (1)

Will a carpet make a room look more beautiful?

Well, it can give the floor a color, but otherwise, the beauty rating can become actually lower than with the smoothed stone floor or a built stone floor. Smooth floors have twice the beauty of carpets.

But, besides the general ‘beauty’ the room “impressiveness” is based on various factors, including ‘wealth’, and while smooth stone increases beauty, it doesn’t affect wealth.

A Reddit user shared that adding carpets/tiles to some of their rooms, changed the room rating from “somewhat impressive” to “very impressive”. (2)

The color can also be useful, since you can color code your base by function, which can be quite convenient. For example, you can use green for colonists rooms, red for functional rooms (crafting, etc.), blue for medical, and so on.

Have a small row of cotton plants from the early game and you will be able to stockpile a bit of it before you start crafting clothes. Just make sure the cloth gets hauled inside somewhere before the rain destroys it.

Actually the same idea can be applied to herbal medicine: grow some from the early game to have it available when you need it.

To increase a room’s beauty, add a marble grand sculpture.

Is it safe to use a carpet?

Well, there is a risk of it catching the whole place on fire, but this is a bit overblown, though. Simply have fire foamers in places and have a plan if a fire breaks out that you can’t control.

To play on a safer side, don’t carpet your valuable stockpiles and work areas.

Firefighting tips

• Create firebreaks of inflammable flooring like stone or concrete, a fire won’t jump over three tiles.

• Drafted colonists will put out flames cardinally and diagonally adjacent to them.

• You can deconstruct a wall to lower the room’s temperature - if the room counts as outdoors; it instantly acquires the outdoor temperature.

• Draft and send more people than you think you need at the beginning, since it is easier to send people back than deal with the lack of human resources.

• Use auto firefighting, but don’t rely on it completely.

• Make the corridors in your base two, or even three tiles wide, so that pawns and pets won’t get trapped and incinerated.

How to make carpets

Carpets are manufactured directly from cotton cloth - it is just another type of flooring, and it becomes available after it is researched.

To use it, if you have cotton, just place it as flooring; you don’t have to craft it. That can be different with mods, of course.

Carpets are best used in bedrooms, recreational and dining rooms. Many players use them to color code the rooms, which is quite convenient.