Help me choose some flooring for upstairs! Pleeese!

[GlassJar]

Not sure where to start with this one, so some general pointers would be most welcome. The prospective floor covering has to stand up to stampeding DC, one hairy dog and two fairly clumsy adults bearing coffee cups.

Upstairs has:

• a smallish landing
• one box room
• one large double (about 15 x 12 foot)
• one smallish double room (12 x 12 ish)

It's currently carpeted throughout in the same cream and shit coloured thick nylony fluffy carpet which is murder to hoover and is now quite stained, with obvious treadpaths through it. I HATE it.

However, it does have the advantage of being fairly insulating of both warmth and noise. And being thick means it positively eats dust, so the dust at least doesn't really show

Underneath the fluffy hell are some fairly nice floorboards, but they'd need patching up, sanding and probably painting to make them suitable on their own. I love floorboards, but they would probably be fairly noisy and I can't see DH going for it, not throughout anyway - well maybe just the landing...

I much prefer hard flooring for ease of cleaning. Downstairs is engineered oak which I'd love to have upstairs too but not sure it would go down easily on top of floorboards. And it's probably too pricey to do throughout. However we have enough left over from downstairs to do the box room with, so that's a thought.

I really can't get excited about cream/beige stained carpet Mark 2 but guess it's the most practical option. But cream/beige is the only option that looks vaguely tasteful, isn't it? I'm willing to be enlightened!

Should I just suck up the carpet option and get myself to Carpet Right? Any advice gratefully received.

You can get some really goo acoustic underlay, my friend has great realistic looking laminate in her loft conversion and you can't hear anything from under it. Sorry I don't know where its from tho, I just know it's possible.

good not goo!

Thank you, I'll google acoustic underlay. Sounds like good stuff!

Actually the existing carpet would make pretty good acoustic underlay - not much would get through that bastarding fluffy monstrosity.

Oh with the carpet, I really like grey now, I think it would hold up to traffic better than cream I have seen it quite a bit in peoples houses.

Wooden floors with nice big coloured rugs in the most trafficked parts of the bedrooms? That's what my Future Dream Home has...

You can get some nice grey/oyster colour carpets if you don't want cream. We have this greige upstairs throughout (pic here while I was still painting doors ) and it's pleasantly neutral and works well with lots of colours.

Sorry no advice but following your thread. I have beige carpet upstairs throughout. Condition still ok, but I hate dust that carpets tend to collect. In fact I was a complete hater of carpets but now I got used to it since we can lay down with the kids on the floor and play. I am on the floor at the moment on my laptop; which would not be possible with hard floor. Anyway I digress... I still prefer hard flooring.
I have bamboo downstairs and considering bamboo at least for the box room for continuity.
Hard wood (oak) would be nice but it would raise the level too much (if done in one bedroom initially).
Greige carpet sounds quite good. And I am surprised of myself by saying so.

cat would you recommend bamboo flooring?

Absolutely, very hardwearing especially for downstairs.

I've just ordered some samples from simplybamboo. We have oak furniture so will have to see what shade looks best with it :-)

Thanks for the replies

Great pics Manatee and Catbasilio, both look lovely.

I hadn't thought of grey carpet, but it would probably work well as a colour, if we could keep it reasonably stain-free! some of the 'cream' carpet is already grey, so it wouldn't take much getting used to

It's so tempting just to rip it up when DH is out... I dunno, may experimentally just get rid of the landing piece to see how hard flooring feels there. It's by far the grottiest so it's a good excuse.