Carpet with pets, your recommendations please

[hididdlyho]

I know people will suggest getting wood floors, but unfortunately I don't think our budget will stretch to it and my DH prefers the warmth of a carpet.

We're in the process of buying a house and the seller has (annoyingly) removed all the carpets, so we'll be left with unfinished floorboards throughout the house. We do have some rugs we can use as a stop gap, but ideally getting flooring down will be our first job.

We have 2 dogs, so I'm guessing we want short pile and nothing too light. I'm not keen on cool tone greys, but perhaps something greige tone may be practical? I'm not keen on very dark carpets, we inherited a black carpet with our current house and it was just as much of a PITA to keep clean as a cream one. I'm thinking to just get the whole house done in the same carpet, we'll be buying a decent amount, so hopefully we may get a little discount to soften the blow.

Can anyone recommend a carpet colour, style which has worked well for them in a pet household? TIA

Whatever carpet you get, make sure you get a carpet cleaner and pet shampoo. My current one is a Bissell, I bought it as it was lightweight but does the job.

Get one that is the same colour as your dogs or mud?

We have cats, the carpet shop we use always tell us to avoid wool or looped carpet, can't remember the proper name. We don't get super short pile or hardwearing as it can look a bit like office flooring if you're not careful. A good Vac is probably more important and hire a rug doctor if it starts looking grubby.

I have a mustard coloured sofa that my ginger cat blends into perfectly.. the black cat sleeps on it 🙄😅

Don’t get greige, I made that mistake, lol, it’s rubbish. I’m getting them all ripped out, and having wood floor/washable rugs I’ve decided. Nothing else works, even with a heavy duty carpet washer, etc. If I was getting carpet again, I’d probably go dark grey? Maybe even brown shades would work? Agree some dark colours are just as bad as paler ones! Let us know what you go for.

For years we had a textured carpet, and when we got a new one, the people in the shop asked whether I was worried about my cats. “No”, I said, “we’ve had one for years and it’s been fine.” Well! The new one wasn’t - the bad mogs pulled it - there’s still a terrible pull in the hall downstairs. The only difference was the old one was wool and the new one wasn’t because I was worried about moths. The new one was easier to clean, though, and those cats did some terrible things on it as they got to be old ladies. I would absolutely second the purchase of a carpet cleaner. So yes, I would agree with you that you want short pile. I think the actual carpet is more important than the colour - you might not really like greige! If you type “pet proof carpet” into google, you will get several suggestions from different carpet places.

Most of our carpets are a mid blue, we had this colour before getting a (black and tan) shorthaired dog and it’s surprisingly forgiving.

We have three dogs, our carpets are a neutral shade, reasonably light but we went for Vivendi from Associated Weavers. It’s basically bombproof.

I'm all set for carpet cleaners, got a bissell main machine, a spotwash and always have dr beckmann in the cupboard! I'm hoping having all new carpets may motivate me to shampoo the carpets more often than I do now. Finally found a decent vacuum cleaner which can cope with the german shepherd moult and I run robot vacuums daily.

I can see the logic behind going for a carpet the same colour as the dog. The most problematic fur is my gsd's tan undercoat which attaches itself like velcro to carpets. I wonder if something in a wheat/oatmeal colour with a tweed fleck might be a good shout? I prefer the look of textured/berber carpet but we have that on our stairs at the moment and it looks more tired than the short pile we have in other rooms.