How do you choose a carpet?

[Merrow]

I've somehow never lived anywhere with carpet before, how on earth do you choose one? I've got as far as knowing I don't want the mushroom coloured one that's currently here...

It's for stairs and an upstairs hallway (rest of the floors are wooden). It needs to look good with wood I guess? It seems like the choice is grey (which I don't like) or 8,000 apparently different shades of oatmeal. There's some stained glass on the stairway in a sort of orange / pink / green colourway. No other windows. Plain off-white walls.

We're not keen decorators so we won't be replacing it with any regularity. I am over anxious about children falling down the stairs so not sure if some are slippier / there's decisions to be made about underlay to cushion any falls.

Budget is slightly immaterial in that we're happy to save for the right thing (in the full knowledge that we will not change it). We don't wear shoes in the house, and no pets, but also don't want something we'll have to be incredibly precious about (we've one DC and another on the way).

Help!

Three factors weigh heavily against synthetic (polyester) carpets :

The environmental impact. That's 120sqm of plastic you'll be putting in landfill in 15 - 20 years. That'll take 1000+ years to decompose. That's anti-humanity, don't you think?

They make some people's feet sweat. I am possibly a bit sensitive but I dislike the way my feet feel hot and sweaty on synthetic carpets.

They look cheap. So if you want your home to give an air of higher quality fittings go wool or 80/20.

Even expensive synthetic carpets (costing as much as wool or wool mix) have a shine to them, which I can see instantly and would bug me every time I saw it if we had it in our house.

You need heavy traffic carpet for hall, stairs and landing as everyone walks over it to move around the house. 80:20 wool:synthetic is the hardest wearing fibre. Go for the heaviest weight you can afford for durability and good underlay.

Do not get a solid, dark or bright colour unless you want to vacuum daily. It will show every speck of dirt and dust. We have desk red hall, stairs and landing carpet that was here when we moved it and it looks okay for about 5 minutes after vacuuming before the cat or DP walk over it.

Dark red, not desk red

We have a cat and really like textured carpets. Our cat was very partial to pulling a looser looped carpet we have, but has not been able to destroy a more expensive, tighter looped one.

The biggest thing I've learnt through experience is that hessian-backed carpets are worth the extra £. The last hallway/stairs carpet that we had fitted has an action-back, and has driven me nuts by fraying around doorways and on the edges of the stair treads very easily.

I got endless samples but couldn't decide. So hard to imagine what it will look like in a whole room from a small section. And I wasn't sure I could bear the disruption of carpet fitting anyway. So I'm probably stuck with the carpet we quickly and cheaply in 2005 for another 10 years...

I went through the carpet decision making turmoil last year so you have my sympathy ! After hundreds of samples settled on one by a company called Brockway carpets, beachcomber in driftwood’

.It’s been down a year (all upstairs rooms and stairs) so far and endured various trades and one or two minor spillages well so still really pleased with it. The colour we went for is what I would describe as a greige and as it’s undyed so natural flecks in. Definitely worth a look at their ranges, we ordered from an online retailer and then got a local independent fitter, was far cheaper than using the carpet shop ! Good luck.