What colour carpet?

[zephyrcat]

Need to carpet the front room, hall and stairs. Lounge is a fair size and bright but hall and stairs smallish. What colour do we get - bearing in mind we have a 5yo, an almost 3yo, a 1yo and a newborn on the way!

I'm thinking not cram because they will inevitable be sick, wee, poo, draw on it at some point but can't imagine anything dark... what works?

We inherited sage green, not too bad, but is a bit limiting on what it will go with. This sounds vile, but a pinky beige rather than a creamy beige is quite forgiving. Look at 'heather mix' colours which are made up of several shades of the same colour, but not patterned, rather than a completely plain smooth pile.

We inherited a short-pile deep red, burgundy carpet in our lounge, and it's awful! Once hoovered, it begins to show up everything (mess from 3 children) almost straight away. I've borrowed our neighbours carpet cleaner several times and spent many hours on my hands and knees scrubbing the wretched thing. Even worse, is the cream one that the previous owner put in the bathroom (what were they thinking?!)

Would consider wood floor for lounge, eithe solid or poss engineered wood (bit like laminate but proper wood layer on top and so much nicer to look at). For stairs etc would also suggest sth with fleck or textured pile, we have darkish taupey colour which with two cats and a 2 year old is doing pretty well. Not so light so as to show all stains but not so dark as to show up all the fluff and pale bits which do tend to show up on dark carpets IYSWIM.

If you do go for carpet, definitely something with a fleck in it unless you want to see every tiny mark. And stick with a neutral colour. IMO.

Also, for what it's worth. I was told by a carpet seller, that the modern textured carpets hold / show dirt more than the traditional pile carpets.