Doonie

My "preference" is HW - which I have in all rooms - however in the bedrooms we have carpeting - We are in Ct, in an old house - It's warmer & quieter.

Wool carpeting is expensive but nothing feels better, warmer and holds up better. Wool has natural soil/stain resiliency

Hi Doonie,
When we remodeled out kitchen we tore out all the original hardwood and carpeting in the house. It is now all hardwood and I love it. It just feels cleaner to me. I put down area rugs in a few of the rooms. And I have sisal rug pathways for out 14 year old lab to walk on because she doesn't do so well on the hardwood, she slides. I put it in all the bedrooms thinking I could add area rugs if it did bother me but so far I don't want rugs in there. I am just relieved I don't have to have Stanley Steemer visit my house like they used to! What surprised me was seeing how much dust is under our bed weekly and I didn't realize what was in the carpet. So hardwood for me and I am very, very happy with it.

I can attest to the stain resistance of wool. We had wool w-t-w in our last bedroom, woven like a sisal or seagrass kind of. The week after it was installed, my kid puked on it. My carpet guy made an emergency visit the next day and it cleaned up perfectly....never attracted dirt like some post-cleaned spots do.

This house, we have hardwood in the MBR. We are on the first floor now. I think we might have considered w-t-w if we were upstairs. My kiddo is in the "bonus room" over the garage and the w-t-w in there keeps it bit warmer and certainly dampens the teenage noise. That carpet is synthetic and does not clean up as well as the wool did. I don't care what they say about all that "stain guard" nonsense...

I don't think all the rooms have to match.

jejvtr, Wool does make a lovely rug, but both my daughters are allergic to it. Maybe the best thing is saving up for hardwood.

Maggie, It's good to hear you had such a great experience. I may be saving up to do just that. My ten year old carpet has a couple of stains on it in the bedrooms from kids and pets. And stains make me crazy!!

Amysrq, I agree with you on the stain guard. So, if the room flooring didn't match, how would you coordinate it? (Sorry if this is too broad a question, but I am curious what people think about this;)

If anyone has fabulous carpet recommendations and photos, I'd love to see them!

Also, any opinions on using a different stain on the bedroom hardwood if it will abut to the hallway hardwood?

I have a strong preference for hardwoods. I just switched my daughter's wall to wall carpet to hardwoods. However, her room is now noticeably colder with the hardwoods vs the carpet. The room is over the garage, but I was surprised how much colder it is with the hardwoods. However, I still don't regret the switch since I HATE carpet--but if I didn't hate carpet so much, I think I would have stayed with the carpet due to the temperature difference.

So, if the room flooring didn't match, how would you coordinate it?

I wouldn't.

It seems to me that if you stay within your personal range of color variation, just as you would painting adjoining rooms, things will work together well enough. I am making an assumption that all your walls in the living area are not the same color, of course.

I'd probably start with paint (no surprise there) and see what kind of carpet would work with the general direction of each room, while still being neutral/flexible enough to work with color changes down the road. Carpet should kind of go away, IMO. You don't want it driving the decisions.

I also have a strong perference for hardwood over carpeting; not only decorwise, but healthwise. Allergies are very common and carpeting is a notorious culpret for aggravating them. Dust mites, animal dander, as well as pollens tracked in from outside will all accumulate. When you think about it, the bedroom is where we spend the majority of our time, so having it be a place that is conducive to good rest, is extremely important. With kids and pets, those inevitable accidents will happen and who wants to deal with the cleaning and orders. Area rugs, on the other hand can always be sent out for cleaning, are easily replaced, and can be wool without breaking the bank.

If putting in a sand and finish hardwood floor sounds like more aggravation that you want to deal with, the newer engineered wood floors are easily installed with minimal disruption. It could even be done room, by room, if necessary.

Smart Strand carpet is supposed to be really easy to clean... my friend has it and she said she spilled marinara sauce on it and it cleaned up like a dream. We are getting it put in part of our main level.

Sashasmommy, I briefly googled Smart Strand and it seems like Dupont is pushing it as an environmentally "friendly"/"green" product. They do list stain resistance and softness as attributes.

Does anyone else have anything to add on this newer product?

valinsv, you have very good points about allergies. It does always creep me out to think about the dust and the nasty mites that are along the baseboards and other places the vacuum can't get to very easily. I don't know anything about engineered hardwood. Is it as durable/thick as the other kind (I don't even know what the old kind is called...serious knowledge gap here!)

amyrsq, I have a really hard time with carpet colors. I would want something that remains neutral enough that I wouldn't be tied to a certain color scheme. I guess when I think about different carpets, I have memories of seeing homes where the carpets varied wildly from room to room (think primary & secondary colors). It was jarring, shocking and incredibly disturbing to the senses. Not to mention tacky. I don't know that I would have the decorating finesse to carry it off. So, that is why one color may be a safer bet for me.

I will just ditto everything Val said. For me, it will always be hardwood over carpet - even in the bedrooms.

tina

I hear what you're saying. Here's what I did in my last house. It was a ranch, everything on one floor. I had bamboo in the main living areas. Back of the house was carpeted. I found a very flat geometric pattern that closely matched the color of the floors. My goal was to have it all present as a single color.

So, that color ran down the hallway, into a sitting room and the guest room. My studio was VCT and DD's bedroom was (eeeek) pale blue. But, standing at the front of the house all you could see was one continuous color all the way to the back.

This is all dependent on where hardwood meets carpet and what color hardwood you have. (I am not advocating for espresso carpet if you have espresso hardwood!)

In my summer house, I successfully used a taupe-y gray that had a slight greenish undertone to it. You have to pick the neutral that will work best with the colors you are generally drawn to.

I have mostly hardwood downstairs, carpet upstairs and in the family room. While I like the warth factor of the carpet especially in the winter time, after pulling up the carpet on our stairs last year and seeing what was underneath, I would love to get rid of every speck of it in our house.

With hardwood, if it's dirty, you see it, plain and simple. Carpet may look clean, but you can't see all the nasty stuff that seeps through the fibers and sits below the carpet and padding.

Simple area rugs can be picked up, aired out if needed, but you can't do that with wall to wall.

My MIL put off white smart strand in her beach cottage and it had held up well so far. My DD spilled a bottle of cologne on it and we were able to get it all out(including the scent).

I've had both hardwoods and carpet in previous houses. While I prefer the look of hardwood, it can get cold even if you add rugs. We have young kids and opted for a good quality stain resistant nylon carpeting (with upgraded padding) in the bedrooms when we built our house. It's much more comfortable for the kids, as they sit on the floor a lot in their bedrooms. We probably would have gotten smart strand had we known about it when we built.
we have brazilian cherry throughout the rest of the house (1st floor and 2nd floor hallway).

We have 3 bedrooms and one large bonus room upstairs that need to have new flooring. The bonus room is over the garage and we use it as a bedroom, so the temperature factor may be an issue. Our oldest is in college now, so we are transitioning to an empty nest. Maybe that should play a factor too.

I took a look at the Smart Strand Carpet on line. I tend to like the very flat looking carpets. They did have a very low loop, but then I worry about snagging.

If we went with hardwood, I don't think we'd be able to match the stain on the red oak that we had redone this past year (it was a 2 stain job because the first one was too light) plus the wood would be newer.

This is very complicated!

Here is the color of our current floors which extend throughout the upstairs hallway.
{{!gwi}}

doonie,
I'm glad to see your photo of the color of your floors. We have hardwood in this house and are having them installed in our "retirement" house now. We have red oak with a golden oak stain here and it's a little yellow for me. So, I'm glad to see yours looking so great in more of a brown tone. I want to show yours to our flooring contractor.

Also, does anyone have a source for large area rugs (oriental type style) that won't break the bank? I find lots of 8 X 10s but am looking for something more like 12 X 15 in size.