Thank you so much, echoflooring. You were absolutely right! We went back to the carpet store to get comfortable on all this before finalizing the order, and I figured I'd circle back for the benefit of anyone in the future who looks at this question. We went back and compared the carpet we chose to the "true friezes" and "true saxonies" they had. This Essential Living is something Karastan calls a "textured saxony." Fiber is much, much thicker, and considerable looser than a real saxony. Unlike the saxony, you can't make lasting footprints (or draw smiley faces as my son did), in the Essential Living carpet. About the same texture as the friezes, just a teeny bit longer and a little bit looser, and a bit softer. It's not as long as I remember it, and carpet vendor says they've had lots of experience putting it on stairs with no wear or safety issues. With his guidance we did scale the padding on the stairs back to a dense, thinner, pretty unyielding felt that should reduce concerns about too much padding/curve on stair treads. Thanks so much for all your help!

It is a cleartouch. For the money, I would be discussing an Anso by Shaw instead. A much safer bet for that money for performance. Smartstrand does not have a look like that as of yet. It just seems like a lot of money for a cleartouch product. Look at a cleartouch product called inner texture or inner twist clear touch KA360 sytle I believe for Shaw aligned groups. Nice and heavy multi color...should be much less than that..and heavier. Normally markets for about 22 or 23 bucks a yard installed with a good cushion. We have sold about 10 cuts of it in the last week. Real nice value.

Thanks, Echo. We actually ended up going with the local guy. We got quotes from Costco, HD and a local family owned store. Costco's quote was ridiculous. They were the most expensive on installation, with extra charges for just about everything, including a random $10.00 MISC charge, which even the sales guy couldn't explain. The local guy had one charge for the install, which was fully baked with rip up and removal, furniture moving, steps, binding, etc. No separate itemized charges. His entire install was less than Costco's basic install before all the Costco extras. The local guy was also able to beat HD's price on everything but the Silk III (lower twist), and we elected not to go with it because we wanted the better carpet. Another item I thought was interesting was that local guy was able to get the Mohawk spec sheets which cross-referenced HD's and Costco's Mohawk carpets to the Mohawk styles he sold. So, we knew we were comparing to apples to apples. Neither Costco nor HD could do that for us. In fact, the salesperson at HD didn't even know Mohawk put out a spec sheet on the carpet. The install is scheduled for next week but so far we have been happy with the price, knowledge and customer support provided by the local guy. He says he has been using the same installer for 8 years so hopefully all will go well with the install.

I just posted a thread in Remodeling asking if I would regret getting the regular poly carpet. I know the answer already though. Sigh. We don't have high traffic, but still..... I think, based on past threads, you're going to be told to get the best now, and go with the SmartStrand. I have a feeling we are going to be replacing this carpet sooner than later! With two kids and a dog yes that is going to "try" the carpet. But, it's still thousands of dollars, and are you going to want to replace all that in just a few years? In our case, it's only two bedrooms. One of which I'm hoping stays as a guest BR where we never get guests. I'm hoping that DD stays in her own place - crossing fingers. She was SO hard on the carpet in her room it was unbelieveable. So we waited and waited till she moved.