wooden floor in bedroom...yes or no?

[chimchar]

planning a desperate revamp of my bedroom...was thinking of putting wooden flooring down....

am a bit worried about the noise element...will it make the room echo-ey?

also worried about the dust bunny factor because I am lax at cleaning

any thoughts?

[EccentricElastic]

Hi Chimchar!

I changed from having carpets everywhere, to sealed pine flooring....and I really wish I hadn't.
The floor is cold to the bare foot in winter, in fact my feet feel cold most of the time whether I'm wearing shoes/socks or whatever. Noise isn't really a factor - but I live alone so don't make much noise anyway. but the dust - oh the dust and the fluff!!! I know mine is an old house, and so expect a bit of it, but every day I have tumblefluff rolling around the floors. Hate it!!

I want my carpets back!!!!!

[chimchar]

thanks for your reply...that's my worry.

I have all sanded wooden floors downstairs, and its fab...easy to keep clean, doesn't show the dirt much and doesn't matter if the kids tramp mud and bits all through...

upstairs though, I wondered if it might be not quite cosy enough, along with the dust factor! it might encourage me to clean more often though?!

[Reastie]

Am considering this for DDs floor for practical purposes (easy cleaning up spills etc) so watching with interest. I imagine if you put a rug or two down it would help with the cold feet and echoes and tbh I will just have to force DD to leave slippers by her bed

[FoxMulder]

I replaced my bedroom carpet for wooden floors and I'm pretty pleased. Yes, there does seem to be a lot of dust, but I kinda like it. If there was a carpet, the dust would still be there festering away, you just wouldn't see it. Actually, it was the masses of hair ingrained in the carpet that made me get rid of it. So yes, great for keeping clean.

Cold feet is a bit of a bummer, but I have a rug where I stand getting dressed. And to be fair, you don't really walk around your bedroom a lot. Not like downstairs (where I also have wooden floors, but notice the cold feet thing much more)

[badguider]

We have wood everywhere and just add different sizes of rugs. One each side of the bed in the bedroom. In the nursery the rug almost fills the whole room (but can still be lifted for cleaning).

[ComtesseDeSpair]

We have wood floors in all our rooms - we have a special Dyson attachment for wood floors which is brilliant, it really cuts down on the dust bunnies; presume other vacuum cleaner manufacturers also produce them.

Unless the bedroom is cavernous, once you've got curtains up, a rug down and bed/wardrobe/drawers/other stuff taking up space, echo noise probably won't be a problem. I can't say I notice it in ours.

[chimchar]

my room has plenty of shit dumped in it items to absorb sound.

we recently bought one of those dyson slimline wireless cleaner things...its fab....dh looks for dust to clean up. might be a good call then!

[TooMuchRain]

What Fox said, I think it's good that you see the dust rather than it just festering in the carpet. I have a couple of rugs by the bed and don't find it cold or echoey.

[ThatRuddyAbyssinian]

We recently got the wooden floorboards in our bedroom resanded, our bedroom is large and it is neither echoey or cold. But they are the original floorboards though so don't know if that makes a difference.

But then we also don't wear shoes around the house - I find wooden floors only really echo if you wear heels on them, which you shouldn't really do anyway as it damages the wood.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

The big problem that I found with wooden floors in a bedroom (in a rental house, so not my choice) was that I picked up all sorts of little bits on the bottom of my feet, just getting ready for bed, and all of those bits ended up in the bed with me, unless I brushed them off before I got in - and I found that was a real pain in the proverbials.

[chimchar]

Hadn't thought of that.

I wear uggs all year round in the house so not a problem for me, but it will be an issue for everyone else.

Hmmmm. More thinking needed then.

Thanks for your replies.

[Thingymajigs]

When I'm hoovering for the 10th time in a week I tell myself that the dirt would be there whether I had carpets or not. Its just that it makes it easier to clean with wooden flooring.
We have cats though so its far better to have wooden floors than easy to rip up carpets.

[MoreBeta]

Wood everywhere here too. Rugs are what you need even thought that sort of defeats the object of not having carpets. Never noticed wood floors being cold even though our house is actually like living in a barn with the doors open in winter.

You need a steam cleaner for wood floors (as long as they are sealed) to get them properly clean. You can vacuum but that just gets up the dust. They need an occassional steam as well every three months or so in a bedroom or more often if pets and children are around.

[FishfingersAreOK]

We have sanded the original floorboards in our room and I love it. Dust bunnies are a lot easier to clean up IMHO. I either use hoover hose or when I am being lazy just whizz the extending feather duster underneath and hoover the bunnies up then. DH has severe dust allergy and his consultant said wooden bedroom floors far better for him as the dust doesn't sink in so less dustmite problem.

[lovemyscarf]

We have original wooden floorboards in our bedrooms. I do vacuum alot but more so because I have a terrible dust allergy and my kids have asthma. I tend to just wipe around the edge of the room where the dust gathers with a wet cloth some days. After seeing how much dust would collect in a carpet I would never have carpets again.

[Francagoestohollywood]

I've always had wooden floors everywhere, and they are fine. Seal them if you have old floor boards!

[BackforGood]

We have polished wooden floorboards (were there when we moved in - wouldn't be my choice).
Our room isn't cold or echo-y, but it is a bit of a dumping ground so there's stuff all over the place, but my dd (who sleeps on the floor below us) regularly complains about how noisy it is when we just walk across the room.
the argument about things being easier to mp up doesn't work, as any liquid or vomit spills seep through the gaps in the floorboards to fester below until you are prepared to take the floorboards up, and once you do that, they never look right again.
Give me carpet any day.

[chimchar]

Oooh. Split decision.

Some love wood, some hate it!

Thanks for your thoughts everyone. Will discuss with dh.

[MoreBeta]

How do you deal with gaps between floor boards?

We just bought an old Listed house with wooden floors that are carpeted over. They are in pretty bad shape although we can sand and polish them but the floorboards themselves have dried out over many years and have got small gaps between them.

I know one solution is to carefully take them all up and slide them together and put another extra floorboard in the room to close up the gaps but that is laborious and might damage the floor boards anyway.

Is there any other solution? Is there a really nice natural wood finish I could lay over the old boards or even insert slim wood fillets between the cracks?

[MoonlightandRoses]

MoreBeta - there's an even better one this stuff. It's very easy to put down and no need for colour matching (works with both the light pine we have upstairs and the darker boards downstairs too) as it still looks as though there is a gap there IYSWIM?

We used to have howling gales coming up through the sitting room floor in winter and this seems to have stopped that.

chimchar - I'm in the 'go with wooden floors' brigade too - the only place we carpeted was the stairs.

[MinimalistMommi]

We have original wooden floorboards in our bathroom, I love it! Yes, it does get dusty though and right now I think they could do with a jolly good wipe rather than just a vacuum. We only moved here in February and I don't know anything about wooden floors...so I'm not sure what they should be wiped with? just plain water? we have carpet throughout the rest of the house but that will be ripped up in our renovations as there are original floorboards underneath

[twooter]

We have laminate in our bedroom, noise not a problem except for the dog who patters around in the morning.

[Francagoestohollywood]

Morebeta, when we lived in the UK the floor boards in our living room where in bad condition, so at the end we found a guy expert in restoration who filled the gaps with wood and then sand it and treated it. It was lovely.

[MoreBeta]

Moonlight - that looks very easy and cheap to do. It may do the trick in our upper floors which have rugs on much of the floor.

Franca - I also found Old Pine Slivers which you hammer into the cracks and then sand down the slivers and the boards. We may do this in the lower rooms where there are things like glass tables and the floor is a real feature.

Is this the kind of product your man used?

[MrsLettuce]

I love hard flooring upstairs, looks and feels so clean.