Picture a landscaper opening the morning post. A quotation sits on page one, a specification sheet is clipped behind it, and six numbers line up side by side. Pile height, face weight, denier, dtex, gauge, tuft bind. Nowhere does either page say which number decides how the lawn feels underfoot or how it looks after five years.
That gap is why this artificial grass glossary is grouped rather than alphabetical. Every A to Z list we have read sorts terms by their first letter, and that is the one thing a buyer never sorts by. We group six clusters by the decision each answers, in the order the decisions are actually taken. Read it as an artificial grass glossary written for a buying conversation rather than for a vocabulary test.
Why This Glossary Is Grouped Instead of Alphabetical
A definition tells you what a number measures, but not whether that number is good, bad or irrelevant to your project.
A buyer wants to know whether a lawn will stay upright under a swing set. An A to Z list sends that buyer to three separate places: pile height, density, and tuft bind. The three numbers only mean something together, and the alphabet separates them by definition.
The layers underneath come third, because they are where most disappointments start. Installation construction follows, then ageing, then the quotation language itself. Where a topic deserves more room than a definition, we name the page that carries it.
Group 1 Fibres and Polymers in the Grass
These terms share one question: what is this surface made of, and what happens to it after a few summers in the sun? Materials set the ceiling on feel and spring, and stiffer yarns need different handling during an artificial turf installation. The polymer is the raw chemistry, the fibre is that chemistry drawn into a strand, and colour, lustre and memory are properties of the finished strand.
The yarn is the twisted strand tufted into the surface, and the fibre is the individual filament inside it. Monofilament fibre is extruded as one solid strand shaped to resemble a blade, and it does not split. Slit-film fibre is cut from a film and opens apart in use, so its fraying is behaviour rather than a defect.
Polyethylene is the soft, springy polymer behind most face yarns, and this family decides how the lawn feels underfoot. Polypropylene is stiffer and coarser, and it usually appears as the curly thatch. Nylon is the toughest and the most abrasive of the three, and it carries the highest cost. Polymer is the umbrella term for all of them, the shared chemical starting point of yarns, infill and backing.
Thatch is the layer of brown curly fibre sitting under the blades, lifting the pile while making the surface read as natural. Extrusion is the process of pushing molten plastic through a shaped die to form a filament, step two of our own production line.
UV stabilised describes an additive worked into the yarn so sunlight degrades it more slowly; treat it as a process description, not a certificate. Deeper greens suit regions that stay green all year, while lighter greens pair with brown thatch in drier settings. Lustre is the sheen on the fibre, and it decides whether the lawn reads as plastic.
Memory is the fibre returning toward its original shape after being pressed down. It is the most misread term in this group: memory here is a material property, not a capacity or a size. Blade cross-sections and what each shape does for stiffness are covered in our guide to artificial grass blade shapes.
Before comparing any two samples, ask three material questions: which polymer dominates the face yarn, has it been UV treated, and is the colour a single tone or a blend.
Group 2 Spec Sheet Numbers Decoded
Spec sheet numbers are the artificial grass terms buyers ask about most, and they must be read together. Pile height describes the look, density describes how much fibre sits in each square metre, and denier or dtex describes strand thickness. The price consequences of these numbers belong to our guide to artificial grass cost per square metre factors.
Pile height is the length of the blades measured from the backing to the tip, normally quoted in millimetres. Shorter pile reads as tidy and clipped, longer pile reads as lush and deep. The judgement that matters is that height is not quality: the taller the pile, the more density it needs to stay upright.
Face weight, also called pile weight, is the mass of yarn per unit area, excluding the backing. Total weight includes the backing, which is why the two figures on one sheet never match. Our breakdown of what face weight really tells you takes that arithmetic further.
Denier is a unit of linear mass based on the weight of a fixed length of yarn, and larger numbers mean thicker individual fibres. Dtex is the same idea on a finer scale, and residential yarns are commonly quoted in the five figures.
Gauge is the spacing between the rows of tufts across the width, and stitch rate is the number of stitches over a set length. Density is the der