Carpets on a budget - what's more important?

[BebeBelge]

Hello, we need to choose carpets for our new house but are having to do it as economically as possible. We're wondering how best to spend our money?

Would it more sensible to have the best carpet we could afford with cheaper underlay or a cheaper carpet with higher quality underlay?

Thanks!

Underlay definitely. Makes way more difference to feel underfoot.

Look at room sized offcuts if you're not desperate to match throughout the house.

I would go with 50 50. Not the cheapest carpet and not the cheapest underlay. Both quite important to make it last. I'd also go for synthetic carpet (not wool mix or anything) as it's easier to clean/wipe up spills.

Thanks! I'm just going through old Mumsnet threads now and polypropylene seems to be popular

I have a polypropylene based on mnet rec and it's very durable.
What about the pay weekly or monthly places? Would that help?

It depends if you're looking to replace in a few years or whether you're hoping for something more hardwearing and long term.

If it's a short term fix, a better underlay as you can then take up the carpet and replace as and when leaving the underlay in tact (and a bit of comfort in the mean time)

If a longer term solution is needed and you absolutely have to choose between the two, a better quality carpet would be my advice, so it holds up to everyday wear and tear, foot traffic, cleaning etc

Although depending on what kind of space you're looking to cover you can often get some really great prices for quality carpets and underlay as "offcuts" or end of the line stuff from carpet suppliers, or people who've over bought for their own projects. We got a 4m x4m "offcut" for our old house that was meant to be £800 worth for ~£200

You can get some real bargains with room sized offcuts - look in upmarket areas with bigger houses as often hallways nad stairs mean huge offcuts which are better quality

We got our offcuts from the Kidderminster Carpet Factory shop. One of them did a ridiculously long room/corridor section in 1 piece (extension bedroom plus access past previous bedroom). We had a list of room sizes and looked to see what we liked. We did get 80% wool and they all came up really well over the 5 years we lived there!

Definitely get good underlay. If that isn't but the carpet is more expensive, it would be a pain to take that up in a few years to replace the underlay whereas you can do it the other way round. Doesn't mean you literally have to have the most expensive underlay on the market though!

Don't get Cormar though - it looks lovely, feels wonderful - but shrinks really badly. We've had real problems with ours and the people who came to measure up for some lino (not the ones we bought it from) said that it's a known problem.

We recently bought from this shop www.ebaystores.co.uk/moreforyourflooruk

I actually called them and did my order over the phone, but it was so much cheaper than elsewhere. I got Luxury 17mm Saxony Actionback Carpet and underlay.

After reading a tip on mumsnet we bought our underlay ourselves wholesale and it was much cheaper (for the same product) than the carpet company quoted, so definitely look into that.

We got factory rejects underlay from a place online it was 200ish all in and covered 3 rooms, stairs and hallway with some still leftover. It was just different brands of underlay and two slightly different colours didn't make any difference at all obviously. The bloke who fitted and supplied our carpets said I should have bought from him when I told him how much I paid. When he actually saw the quality and thickness he changed his mind! I have no doubt he would have supplied us with the much thinner cheaper stuff for the same price.

It was 12mm