Flooring Series: should you still have carpet in 2021?
Hard surface flooring is not going anywhere anytime soon but carpet has definitely been coming back in style in recent years! There’s something about its cosiness, warmth and feel under our feet making it a popular choice, especially in cold countries.
And if carpet has remained one of our favorite flooring options, it’s not without a reason. Its benefits speak for themselves, but its cons can also make it a deal breaker for your project.
So is choosing carpet over other flooring products the right thing for you, your lifestyle and your space?
Benefits
Adds style to a room:
With carpet styles, patterns and colours being limitless, the floor becomes another surface where you can express yourself. You can keep it neutral or be as bold as you want, the point is, the walls are not your only option anymore when it comes to creating a focal point.Offers comfort:
Carpet feels nice to walk and sit on, play or work plus, due to its nature, with flexibility and cushioning properties, it is a shock absorber.Provides warmth and insulation:
Again due to its nature, carpet improves the heat insulation of your house and is therefore an excellent choice if you live in a cold climate and / or want to reduce your heat loss and costs associated with heating your home.Reduces sound:
Carpet is an excellent sound absorber. It will dampen the sounds produced by all your technology as well as footsteps within your home but also between floors.Is naturally slip resistant:
Carpet not only provides a soft landing surface, it also helps to prevent some falls in the first place, particularly on stairs. In comparison, hard surface stairs are much more slippery, potentially creating a safety concern for very young or elderly persons.Improves indoor air quality:
Depending on the nature of its fibers, carpet can be one of the lowest VOC-emitting materials in your home and also compared to other flooring options. In fact, and independently of its fibers, it acts as a passive air filter, trapping dust, pollen and particles, thus removing them from the air. For a long time, we thought that carpet was aggravating asthma and allergies but numerous studies over recent years have consistently shown that carpet is actually more beneficial than hard surface floors.
Drawbacks
They are mainly coming down to its high maintenance nature:
Accidental spills on carpet are generally harder to clean than on other flooring surfaces. Different fibers call for different cleaning approaches but it's definitely something to keep in mind if you have toddlers around or for a high traffic area, sometimes not even a professional steam cleaning will get rid of the stain.
Pets love carpet for its warmth and coziness but you will have a harder time to keep it clean with all the hair sticking to it, plus if you have a puppy who is not potty trained yet or an old dog with some incontinence, the odours are difficult to get rid of.
If you find yourself in one of these positions and have a broadloom carpet, be aware that you will have to rip off the whole room and entirely replace it.
Its longevity: of course the quality of the carpet in the first place, where it is installed in the house and how it is maintained will all play a part in its longevity, but overall and compared to other hard surface floorings, it won’t last as long.
Cost
You might have noticed that I haven’t talked about its price yet, and it simply is due to the fact that it can hugely vary.
Sometimes, yes if you have a plain carpet of standard quality, it will be more cost effective than other flooring types but as soon as you enter the category of high quality, natural products the costs can very quickly increase.
That is just for the cost of the carpet itself, you will then have to add to that the cost of the underlay (always check which one to get with the manufacturer as it will max up the overall benefits of the carpet in terms of comfort, heat and sound insulation) and labour, which could both make the carpet an option more costly than initially thought.
Does carpet sound a good fit for your space? If so, make sure to check my other upcoming posts about the latest trends but also all the technicalities, I know it can get a bit overwhelming with all the options on the market.