Can I see your brown / darker coloured carpets?

[Obsesetits]

We currently have a very light beige carpet in the lounge and with two kids, a mechanic husband and a new build garden (boggy mess) with patio doors that walk straight into the lounge; it’s just so hard to keep it looking nice. I carpet clean every weekend and it’s destroying my soul because it still doesn’t look clean.

so I’m thinking of re-carpeting in a darker colour; or at least something that got those duel-tones in the carpet just so that marks aren’t as obvious!

but I’m not sure how I’d like a darker carpet visually - and all the Google pictures just bring up show-home pictures which isn’t realistic for me 🤣 I need to see real home with real carpet!

I'd be inclined to go with some luxury vinyl. With a darker carpet it'll still be mucky.

Darker carpet will still have the dirt. Why not out a mat down and train everyone to take their shoes off?

Or lay a hard floor and a rug.

You don't need carpets, you need hard floors! Easy to clean and rugs down where you need cosy areas. I'd never ever put carpets downstairs.

I would also have a hard floor with a rug. We've moved several times over the years and have chosen not to have carpet downstairs in our last five houses. It makes for much easier cleaning, particularly when we had our DDogs.

One of them had original 1920s parquet throughout the living spaces, another had victorian quarry tiles. We laid engineered oak throughout the ground floor in two others, whilst at our current cottage we're planning to lay reclaimed Georgian floorboards (we're lucky to have originals in one area).

Over the years we've built up a collection of lovely rugs in a variety of styles (Persian, kilim, jute etc), but all fairly large - so that the front furniture legs sit on them, which not only makes a space appear larger, but is cosier too.

What you really need is hard floors and a large Indian rug. They’re beautiful but bomb proof.

You’re right, my vote would be to laminate parquet style! DH really isn’t keen on having a hard floor in the living room though. He doesn’t think it’s very ‘homely’ even with a nice rug down.

he may take some convincing!

Oh we’re also open plan! The thought of having two different hard floorings all the way through puts me off a bit? We’ve only recently had the kitchen re-done in vinyl because we had an under-floor leak which ruined the flooring.

We had a nice mid browny grey called tortoiseshell. It was a bit patterned and hid most stains caused by 3 kids and a couple of clumsy adults.

When we lived rurally three boys, three dogs, was hard flooring in utility, kitchen, living room. Hall stairs and landing and sitting room carpet . Now just the two of us carpet in the sitting room, cleaned twice a year. It's quite a dark green with a swirl in it. But the bedroom downstairs is beige. The black dog hairs we track track in from the Labrador. Drives me nuts.

Rugs are a very good idea on hard floor in living room.

Carpet it depends on your colour scheme, walls, curtains, furniture.