The title of your topic literally made me LOL! We just added on and have stripped down the rest of the house and all I'm walking on is concrete! Thank goodness we're almost finished and can get the wood in.

Okay, my son has stained concrete and it is beautiful! But...he has carpet in the LR, DR and the bedrooms only. The two hallways, foyer, kitchen, UR, and sunroom have the concrete.

They said just the other day they're glad they did half and half because all concrete is really hard on the feet. But if you get large area rugs, then it would be fine.

Plus, the concrete feels great in the summer!

Forgot to add, what really makes the house pretty is the concrete divides the carpeted areas.

Stained concrete or polished concrete floors can be very pretty! They look like marble! I love them! Unfortunately we don't have them, but we are in the process of having our patio done.

If you have bare concrete, consider having it stained instead of painted if you can. I think it makes a nicer floor.

Thanks for all the replies so far! Arizonarose, I meant to write stained, not painted, thanks for making me aware of my error. I agree, they can look like nice marble.

Oakelyok, we'd keep the carpet in all bedrooms probably, except the master maybe. I agree it's nice to keep some soft areas, and using area rugs is also a good idea.

I have concrete floors in my basement. We had them stained, but before they stained them they cut in a grid pattern, so that after the staining it looks kind of like tile. The squares are about 18-20 inches each, if I remember correctly (too lazy to go measure right now - LOL) and the color has some variation to it. We have several area rugs on it, also. I'll include some pictures, but they're not great pictures - it's kind of hard to get it to photograph well, but you can get an idea. Maybe in the next couple of days I can try to take some better pictures, if you're interested, these are just what I have on my computer right now. There are lots of things you can do with stained concrete - mine is a very simple version. I'll also include a link with a gallery that gives you some ideas of the possibilities for concrete floors. Just click on the first small picture, which will open that picture larger, then you can tab through the pictures from there by clicking 'next.'

Here is a link that might be useful: Concrete floor gallery

Thank you so much for the pictures and the interesting link! Your floors are beautiful!

I feel very inspired by your pictures, I think something like what you have would look great in our house. In your opinion, are there any drawbacks at all to having concrete floors? They seem so easy to take care of and with four cats who sometimes have accidents and throw up hairballs, it sure would be nice to have a lot less carpet.

Be aware that your floor might not be super clean under your carpet. There is probably drywall mud, if your walls were sprayed with a texture, there will probably be paint, and no telling what else. Also, sometimes when you pull the carpet tack strip out of the concrete, it will leave divots in some spots.

Builders, and carpet layers do NOT clean concrete floors before they lay carpet. It can be quite a bit of work to get the concrete clean, but stained concrete floors are beautiful, and very easy care.

Two weeks ago we ripped the carpet out of my DIL's dining room. We also found some dark brown stain/paint/leveling compound? right in the middle of the floor. There were paint spatters, mud spatters, and we got quite a few of the divots when I ripped out the tack strip.

We've lived with our concrete for several months now. Drawbacks, I'm trying to think....I guess if it's an area that you will be doing a lot of standing in it might not be the most comfortable surface for that without a rug, or something soft, underfoot. Ours is a living/bar area, so that's not really an issue for us. I have area rugs on mine, and I know some people find it inconvenient to vacuum around area rugs rather than having wall-to-wall carpet to vacuum, that's not a big deal to me, but I've seen it mentioned by others. If it is an area where people, especially kids, might tend to sit or play on the floor often, I probably wouldn't recommend it without some sort of soft padded rug. We have a 1 & 3 year old, and they've done fine with it with a rug. That said, they also have a playroom with wall-to-wall carpet just adjacent to the area with concrete, so perhaps that would be a bigger issue to me if we didn't have that room?? I guess concrete always has the potential (i have no idea how great) to crack, so I guess that's something to consider. That's all I can think of, and in my situation at least, those are pretty minor things.

The pros...So far they seem really easy to keep clean. I think there are 2 things about my floor that really help keep it from looking dirty as quickly. First the color has some variation to it, and second, the floor has a little bit of a texture to it. Some of the floors that are in that link above look very smooth and shiny and I wonder if those would tend to show dirt more, but I don't know for sure. The finish seems to be very durable. I think unless you went at it with a hammer and chisel to chip away at the concrete, it would be very difficult to mar the finish. If you ever were to have water issues in your basement, your floor wouldn't get damaged. We have an entry from a patio, where there will eventually be a hot tub, so that was another consideration for us - the potential for tracking in from that door, and down the road dripping wet bodies walking through that door.

As mentioned by the poster above, our floor down there was a complete mess before they started on it. In addition to the usual construction mess, we have a stone fireplace there, and the masons did all of their work right on the concrete, so there was lots of mortar residue and what-not from that. We also had a few divots in ours that had to be patched. I can't remember how those got there, but apparently it's not uncommon to have to do some of that before the staining is done. Anyway, it can be done on a floor that was a complete mess, but how much work the clean-up is I can't say for certain, because luckily we did not do the cleaning.

Sorry this was so long, but hope it helps.

Yes, my husband just finished our whole house! I love the floors and they are sooooo easy to care for and keep clean. I have two kids & the mess they did to the carpet, grout and tile we used to have, the stained concrete floors are staying until they move out.....:-)

We removed berber carpet from our walk out basement 2 years ago. We did have to do quite a bit of scraping, hole repairing, and cleaning. We did a concrete overlay, stained, and waxed it. It has held up well and it looks good. We also did our courtyard the same way except we used an exterior finish. I don't have photos of the basement, but this is the courtyard.

fauxchick56 , that is sort of like what we are having done to our patio only not as dark. I love it!

How did you create that rich deep color?!? Exceptionally beautiful and bet it's stunning when it's wet!

bodica - I assume your question was about my courtyard. If not, sorry! I used the oxidizers that are made by the concrete overlay company/Bella Vernici.

Thanks for the compliment and to arizonarose, too.

I love stained concrete. Unfortunately I discovered it after the house was built, so all my projects are outside.

Below is link to one of my projects and here are some more:
http://designsbylilianne.banyantree.us/?p=14

Here is a link that might be useful: One project in more detail

punamytsike , your concrete project is absolutely gorgeous !

Thanks for sharing your link.

marg411, thank you for the useful info!
crashbomgbang, thanks for all that information! I appreciate it!
Thanks also to fauxchick for the courtyard picture, that turned out really nice! Gorgeous color!