Tell me about stair runners!

[HeyToTheHo]

Redoing the hall, stairs and landing and want to carpet wall to wall on landing, put wooden floor in hall, and then sand and paint the stairs and put a stair runner carpet on the stairs.

How does this work? Can carpet people make a runner from any carpet or are there special carpets?

I have no clue so hoping MNers will have wise words/ things to think about!

Here's a picture of our stairs. Ours are very wide so standard runners would have looked silly. This is just normal carpet that we had bound.

I never had any problem with keeping them dust free .

Oops

Beautiful but expensive, when I looked into it. The whipping adds up.

Gorgeous! I definitely want them!!

Stupid question - I've seen lots of comment about making sure the fitters are good with runners. we've only ever bought carpet from carpetright before, but seems people are quite scathing about them on here.

How do you know the fitters will be good with another/ any company?

I suppose you ask the company if they have fitted many runners. They will have more than one team, and will send the more experienced I would think.

Heytohello
Please try and find an independent retailer as opposed to going to carpetshite.
I don't work for a carpet shop but I do call on many of them as a distributor rep. You will be getting a good service and good job done and if anything was to wrong for any reason - decent flooring retailer will always put it right for you as they wouldn't want their reputation affected in any way.

I would second using a local independent shop rather than a national chain. I've found in the past that retailers that stock brands like Alternative Flooring or Crucial Trading generally are a good place to start. Even if those carpets are outside your budget, the stores will be knowledgeable and they have a reputation to protect.

This is mine. Edges are folded

You can have the stair fitted tight over the lip of the stair but ours has a trim on so couldn't be done. I second going to an independent. Op what area are you in ? Roughly ?

I'm in north Surrey, inside M25

Lots of great tips - thanks everyone.

For those who have folded edges, why did you choose that over whipped? Is it not bulky at the edge?

Mcchicken - really like your carpet - what kind is it?

Trixy- gorgeous staircase. By the scale of your staircase I think your house might be slightly larger than my 30s semi house

Thankyou. I'm not sure of its exact name. But I can ask dh in the morning ( as he's asleep now ) no mines not bulky at all. When dh fitted it he only put the underlay in the middle of the carpet for this reason. I love whipping. The runner we had made up for the hall is whipped. Tbh we didn't get the stair runner whipped as there was already so much detail going on with the wallpaper etc.

I have this Roger Oates runner on a stairs painted grey. The one thing we found when we were looking for a runner is that the width of the stairs is crucial - our stairs was on the narrow side, which ruled out quite a few runners we liked, because they would have covered almost the entire step and looked slightly odd.

It sounds like mine is fitted the same as Mcchicken's, the underlay is cut slightly shorter than the carpet so there is always only two layers, either a double layer of carpet at the edges or a layer of carpet and underlay in the middle. I wanted a very streamlined look so wanted clean edges rather than the extra detail that you get with a whipped edge. I've seen it done both ways and both look equally good. I've tried to take a photo of the edge so you can see what it is like.

Thanks hey to!!! My house is essentially a 2 up 2 down, so not that big in terms of numbers of rooms, but the rooms are very large!!

Incidentally it was independent fitters contracted through carpetright that fitted ours. They did an ok job considering how awkward the job was.

Hello, we used a company in Surrey, called Higherground to fit our lovely Roger Oates stair runner. When we went to see them they showed us a bespoke option whereby the carpet that is fitted on the landing is cut to size for a runner on the stairs. They had something like 300 different types of tapings to choose from. We were seriously tempted, but we had a Roger Oates stair runner before and loved it so much that we opted to replace it with a new design. As other posters have said, get a good reputable company who have experience, and can advise you properly. Best of luck ; )