Carpets vs wooden flooring in your home

Since the dawn time (or maybe slightly more recently) there has been a hugely controversial debate raging: carpets or wooden flooring?

Let the battle commence!

Appearance

Carpets

Let's face it carpets can look dated very quickly with constantly changing fashions. Depending on the colour and style, a carpet can dominate a room, which can be a good or bad thing. Think crazy 70's style carpets that can cause permanent damage to your eyes. A light coloured carpet can really brighten up a room, but on the other hand they can stain easily. There's nothing more annoying, and expensive than a badly stained carpet. This could be a major hazard if you own pets and have small children.

With age carpets can look noticeably worn and faded, particularly in areas in which are walked on quite a lot and when furniture is rearranged the colour change can be striking.

Wooden Flooring

Wooden flooring be it laminate or real wood can look really modern whilst creating fluidity and space if entire floor area is in the same style. You can also accessorize a wooden floor with a rug. However, wooden flooring can show up dirt easily. They'll need to be washed like you would do with the kitchen floor to keep them glistening.

Functionality

Carpets

Carpets have a very important function of acting as heat insulation for your home. They allow heat to stay in and keep energy bills low. Having carpets can save you money on energy bills as well as adding a bit of character.

Kids can be troublesome and left to their own devices they can completely destroy a home within minutes. Liquids will be spilt and many types of food will get thrown, not to mention what comes out of them! This is where the idea of having carpets doesn't seem like a great idea. Unless you're clever with your choice of carpets. In a house with kids pale mono-colour carpets are a big no-no. But a decoratively patterned multi-colour carpet can be just the thing and can easily hide a huge variety of stains.

As well as being messy, kids are also on the go all day running around at 30mph, this is where wooden flooring can be problematic. Baby walkers and anything with wheels can scratch wooden surfaces. Babies may find it harder to learn to crawl on wooden flooring and these slippery surfaces could be hazardous for them.

Wooden flooring

Wooden flooring can be a nightmare if you live in a flat, if the people above you have wooden flooring it's going to make a lot of noise when they're walking around. This will be particularly annoying at two in the morning and if it's you who lives on the top floor you may receive complaints from angry neighbours.

On the other hand, spillages are not a problem on wooden flooring you can simply mop them up; their appearance is easy to maintain and they won't age as badly as carpets. 

You can easily accessorize wooden flooring by getting a rug which will help to retain heat throughout your home.

Cost

Carpets

www.tradeadvisor.com advises that caret fitting which is usually carried out by professionals costs between £3- £6 per square metre. There will usually be extra costs such as delivery and cost of taking up old carpet. Plus there's the cost of the carpet itself. It's not unreasonable to pay upwards of £1,000 to carpet a three bedroom house.

Wooden Flooring

There are many different types of wooden flooring, by far laminate is the cheapest option. Real wooden flooring is considerably more expensive. If you go for laminate you should be able to install it yourself which will save a lot of cost but will be time consuming. 

Installing real wooden flooring will require professional expertise and once it's down it will be very tricky to have access to the central heating pipes and other cables underneath.

And the winner is...

It greatly depends on what your lifestyle is as to which option will suit best. A family home will probably best benefit from carpets and will also keep energy bills lower. If you had a home you were looking to rent out laminate flooring might be a wise move.

But either way, the choice is yours.