Floorboards showing through new carpets

[FSteph]

Hi there,

We have recently had new carpets laid in the entire upstairs of our house. We also had new underlay fitted - the one the carpet shop recommended. Anyway, not even 2 months later and there are waves showing under all of the carpets which the carpet salesman has told me is down to the floorboards underneath impressing through the underlay and carpet - apparently it’s common in older houses. However I’m not happy with this, it looks awful! And I’ve paid a lot of money for the new carpet expecting it to look flat! I’m wondering if anyone has had similar or if it’s reasonable for me to request they sort, possibly with a thicker underlay that’s more appropriate to this type of house. I should say, there were carpets down before from old homeowner and no floorboards showing through on those.

thanks!

I had this problem in one of our bedrooms we replace the whole floor with new floor boards and over 20 years later it still looked fantastic when we sold our house. Sorry I couldn’t give you the answer about the carpet but the floor boards are probably the problem not the underlay or the carpet.

You should have checked you floorboards were level before carpets going down. You'd need a joiner, it's not part of carpet layer's job. No underlay is going to mask uneven floorboards.

Laying down 3mm hardboard is easier than completely replacing the floorboards if you're going to fit carpets over the top. Nothing will show through.

But it's not for you to come up with solutions, take photos and make a complaint. It's not unreasonable to expect a professional carpet company to have identified this as a potential issue and raised it with you in advance and suggest things that cold be done to prevent it. If the salesman has said, "It’s common in older houses", then he's effectively admitted it's something they should have predicted as a risk and advised you about in advance.

Thank you all so much for your responses - I completely agree that floorboards should have been sorted first, and had they been an issue we were aware of, we definitely would have done this. Like I said, when the old carpets were down, there was nothing at all showing. It’s as though the new underlay / carpet aren’t as thick as the previous. I should also point out, uneven floorboards aren’t the issue. The lines are uniform so it actually seems to be the impression of the boards rather certain sections rising up.

photos might help!