Carpet advice/mistakes to avoid/budget

[MoiraNotRuby]

I need to carpet an entire house and am a bit overwhelmed at the prospect.

Wwyd?

Do every room the same colour?
Get the builders to do it before completion or arrange someone local for straight after if that's even possible?
I have no idea about budget either! Guessing around £3k, its a typical poky new build, 3 bedrooms. Or am I in cloud cuckoo land?...

Had enough of adulting lately. But need to get this part right!

@MoiraNotRuby Where abouts are you? We're up North. Two big bedrooms, stairs and landing was £650 carpets, underlay etc. Fitting was just over £100. We got offcuts though so the colours slightly vary but not to the point it looks odd!

Avoid looped carpets & go for cut pile if you have a cat / may possibly ever have a cat 🙂

Don't buy cream carpets, I've had the whole house recarpeted in cream, it's a nightmare, I actually have dreams about marking the carpets 🙄
No kids, just me and oh.
BTW I now have two pairs of slippers one for upstairs, one for downstairs 😂

No need to have the same colour all through unless you want to. Good idea to choose fairly neutral colours so it doesn't dictate the decor for years to come.
I would always choose something that is 80% wool 20% manmade to combine wear, looks and comfort. Definitely avoid nylon. but other man mades are much better than they used to be and can be great and give you more choice.
Again personally I don't like patterned carpets. It's going to be there for a long time. I wouldn't get flat plain either, it shows all the bits, as does anything too dark.
Dark cream to light brown or a mid grey (depending on other furniture) fleck is bland enough to suit most decoration and prevent a room looking cluttered. Rugs can be added for colour and effect as well if there is too much plain carpet around.

Don't choose grey. It is very dated. Go for a more oaty or wheaty coloured neutral. In a small house, same colour throughout works, though stripes on stairs can look good.

If there's any danger of moths, avoid pure wool.

@hivemindneeded How rude! My new carpets are grey 🤣

Thanks for the advice, I've got a long list of what NOT to get now

But joking apart I appreciate this. Fleck all the way.

I will never have a cat but do have a dog, if that makes any difference.

Don’t go to carpet right. That’s my advice. Our carpet has been terrible. Cost us a fortune. Wasn’t laid properly. It is damaged underneath and has holes in it. Yup boy had it two months.

Thanks- that sounds very stressful and disappointing. Hope they do something about it, I will steer well clear! Good luck.

We got ours from Kidderminster Carpet Factory- very much recommend if they're vaguely local. Mixture of roll ends and bigger rolls.

Get nice underlay whatever carpet you get.

I also like 80/20 wool/artificial and a fleck pattern on a neutral background!

The only carpet I've really loved has been my crucial trading one. It feels like a giant cable knit jumper

You don’t need to spend that much. Cheaper ways of doing it are to ask on your local Facebook page for mobile carpet fitters and suppliers - look for recommendations. Much cheaper than going to a shop. Or if you have local carpet shops see if they have a remnant section. Often you can get room sized remnants and find a good bargain.

Personally I think neutral / oat colours are far more dated than grey. Yeah the whole grey house everything grey thing is dated now but you can’t go wrong with smart mid grey carpets.

Avoid cream 100% wool looped carpets! We made the mistake of getting this when we got the house carpeted last year
It was very expensive and a nightmare to keep clean!!

OK I'm steering well clear of loops and cream!

80/20 sounds ideal. I am in Midlands, I know the Kidderminster carpet radio ad earworm so I must be in their 'catchment' and I will definitely do all those budget shopping around ideas.

Trying to work out if its possible to do it a bit at a time and make do with rugs when we first move in. I suppose it will be horribly dusty.

void blue carpets in a domestic setting.
also think grey looks dated, and office-like.
warm oaty colours, bit of a pattern, abstract, muted, maybe greenish .
i think different colours in different rooms help children/dogs navigate/ know their boundaries.
also just more interesting.

Don’t? Why carpet? I much prefer wood, tiles or even lino to carpet. So much easier to keep clean, so much less allergy inducing if you react to dust mites.
Ignore me if carpets are what you really want. I just don’t understand why the are the default.

We paid around £15/metre for our carpet from Kidderminster. That was an actual roll which we used for our stairs/landing. Spent slightly less on roll ends for bedrooms but would tend to prefer to do as much as possible at once as you'll pay more for more visits from the fitter...

We didn't want all the same throughout the house - had a cream carpet in the master bedroom (did clean up ok) and blue/green with twists in the other 2, then picked room wall colours once we had decided on carpets.

Buy the most expensive carpet you can afford. We buy cheap and they look shit after a year thanks to cheapskate DH

Pay extra for wool. My polypropene carpets wore out in two years!

Try a local independent retailer. They might be more expensive at the outset, but the quality is usually better and the fitters are more skilled. You need to know whether fitting is included in the price as well.

I think cream/ oatmeal/ beige is very dated and a nightmare to keep clean. You have whatever colour you like, but consider how easy it will be to keep clean.

Wool = carpet beatles. We have biege which is quite good for hiding any dog fur as it's the same colour!

@MoiraNotRuby

OK I'm steering well clear of loops and cream!

80/20 sounds ideal. I am in Midlands, I know the Kidderminster carpet radio ad earworm so I must be in their 'catchment' and I will definitely do all those budget shopping around ideas.

Trying to work out if its possible to do it a bit at a time and make do with rugs when we first move in. I suppose it will be horribly dusty.

We are renovating our house whilst living in it 😭 so aren't ready for carpets yet. Our house was (still is) dusty and had bare floors. We went to a little high st carpet shop and bought offcuts for each bedroom - colour/material didn't matter. We managed to get all of upstairs 'carpeted' for a low price. No fitters or underlay, we just rolled it out ourselves. This is only a short term measure but it's been over a year 😳 and it's made it so much more bearable than dusty floorboards. Only one room has a gap around the edges, the rest got offcuts that fit the whole floor. So much better than a small rug.

Seal between the skirting and floorboards. We didn't for the beige carpet in our lounge and, ten years on, it has a dirty grey edge around the edges.

@feb21

Seal between the skirting and floorboards. We didn't for the beige carpet in our lounge and, ten years on, it has a dirty grey edge around the edges.

Thank you! I've seen this on carpets in the past but hadn't realised that's the reason. Will definitely keep that in mind when we do our landing & stairs.

I think all grey in the entire house is dated now, but we have a mix of wooden floors with grey carpet on the stairs and landing and it definitely doesn't look dated yet.

We went for a mid price range grey, speckled with lighter and darker bits so it's not a flat colour. We went for a more expensive underlay and I would recommend that if you can. It gives it that plush feeling and 2.5 years down the line it doesn't look flattened at all.

My parents redid theirs in a mint green flat colour and it just hasn't aged well at all. The flat colours are really not the way forward I don't think.