Flooring in baby's room

[JessieMcJessie]

We completed on a new house yesterday, very exciting. I'm having a baby (our first) at the end of August. The room that we have earmarked for the baby (after he/she moves on from sleeping in our room) has old floorboards which are a bit rough and splintery. I had always imagined a cosy child's room with a carpet, but thinking about it, would that be a silly idea given the potential for poo explosions, vomit, spilt milk etc? Any other suggestions apart from sanding the boards?

I'm worried I'd trip over a rug in my sleep deprived stupor.

We had carpet in DSs room when he was a baby (pale beige) and it was no problem, our imminent new arrive has a cream carpet in their new room and I'm sure it will be fine too. I tended to find poo/sick/www ended up on me more than the carpet
Keep a bottle of vanish carpet cleaner in the house as stains are unlikely to be limited to baby's bedroom and quick treatment tends to shift most things.
Don't go for anything too expensive then if it looks a bit rough in a few years you can replace it.

We had dd who had reflux and in hindsight I suspect mild cows milk allergy, given the huge amount of vomit and poo she managed to produce when tiny I'm glad we didn't have carpet. We got some v thick wood effect lino/vinyl put down, it's warmer and softer underfoot than the floorboards (which are in great nick and I'll prob sand them down in the future) 4 years on its still going great now ds has moved in. He has a delightful habit of screaming himself sick in about 30 seconds so v handy to be able to wipe clean at 3am. It's a smallish room though but looks v effective. Dd has moved to a bigger room and she has carpet which is bleach clean, handy for occasional accidents now she's a bit older but I miss the handiness of just wiping clean!

I don't think you can rely on having such a clean baby as wonky's! We deliberately didn't replace the horrid old carpet until both DC were potty trained and just got nice carpet when we did.

If I was carpeting a baby's room from scratch, I'd look at scrubable polypropylene carpets - much nicer than they used to be. You can also have carpet Scotguard protected. Go to a carpet shop and have a chat! I found our local independent carpet shop much more helpful than the big chains. They could also arrange their appointments around school pick up!

The worst baby-related stains we got on carpet wert from Sudocreme! It leaves unshiftable dark grey/purple stains on cloth'

We have floorboards with a large rug (ikea, not expensive) which covers most of the room. It has been weed and pood on a couple of times, and will probably be binned when we are done with babies (it is jute so can't be washed, washable would have been better!) I am glad it is not a fitted carpet.

You def need something soft and quiet as you may be pacing back and forth a fair bit on it!

Within about half an hour of bringing DS home I was glad I had put laminate flooring down.

You need flooring you can creep across. And something that won't sound like a herd of elephants is dancing on it when baby is a toddler a little over a year after being born.

Washable carpet. Bissell carpet washer. Handy box of bicarb for potential puke smells. Job done.

Thanks everyone. Much appreciated. Looking forward to years of cleaning up bodily fluids from the floor. Good point about the noise levels, this house is very creaky!