Would you put hard flooring upstairs...

[UCM]

I am just musing over the idea of putting down laminate (floorboards are crap and can't afford real wood), so something tasteful that resembles wood with a veneer or something?

I got this idea from the Dinosaur pic thread?? I will still carpet the stairs, but we have no carpet downstairs anyway. Bathroom is tiled. Will it be very noisy..

DS has laminate stuff in his upstairs bedroom. It has got a noise dampener membrane thingy underneath and the noise is not too bad. Carpet is quieter though.
It is at its worst when he jumps from his high sleeper bed onto the floor, but then I think that would be noisy whatever - lol!

I have one solid wood floor (DDs) and it is a big round echoing room (v.big hence the wood floor, would have had to have had a join in the carpet) so yes we do hear it, as we do noise from the round room but that has carpet.

In my DS' room I have put very good quality vinyl floor, it exactly matches the oak beams in the room - this is because he is a regular vomiter! The vinyl floor is much quieter than the wood, cost 10% of the wood and looks fine.

If you are talking about laminating a hallway/landing that will be noisy due to the amount of traffic and not being 'contained' by a room as such - you will need some mega underlay under that!

(I stayed up late last night reading the mumsnet classics, was so tempted to start my reply 'is.. SORRY )

I normally don't like laminates but Homebase have one at the moment which is very realistic - down to fake woodworm holes!

no

carpets for bedrooms and sitting rooms, always, imho

I have cheap laminate upstairs to help with dd's excema- tis very clean and easy to look after and I don't particularly notice the noise

Our last house had solid wood floors upstairs. It was fine from a noise point of view. I found that it was much easier to clean children's rooms - just sweep everything into a big pile and sort it out from there!

Personally I feel hard flooring is for downstairs only. I think bedrooms need carpet for comfort, warmth and sound insulation. As I say - only personal opinion.

We are in the process of putting wood floors all through downstairs (should only take another decade). I think upstairs as well would be too much.

we have laminate in our bedroom as i have allergies

we recently re did the boys bedroom and did think about laminate, but they spend a lot of time sat playing on the floor etc playing with lego, could you imagine the noise if they tipped out their huge boxes of lego onto a wooden floor? its bad enough on carpet

KTeePee has a point, Homebase do their own brand of solid wood floor called Parrawod I think.

It is solid pieces of wood - like a butchers block effect, so solid top to bottom, rather than an engineered floor which is veneer stuck on MDF - which is very reasonable - ie was 1/2 price when I looked and better still on 10%day!

We have boards in our bedroom but carpet in ds's room and spare room. When we go in those rooms it feels like PURE LUXURY. Get a carpet, I reckon. Laminate flooring seems to attract dust! (or not hide it very well).

Wall-to-wall carpets make me sneeze, so we have stripped floorboards everywhere. They barely make any noise at all upstairs - in fact they only make a lot of noise anywhere if you walk on them in shoes or push chairs around. Laminate may be a bit noisier since it's harder and has less give in it than pine floorboards.

We have carpet in our room, but laminate in guest room (it's a dark wood and individual boards, so looks more like real wood) and laminate in gym. Ds's room has vinyl with roads on it, which is really cool.

our bedrooms all have stripped floors - stairs and hallways have carpet upstairs. they are v easy to clean, esp in the kids rooms ( 2)
carpets are so dirty!

Thank you for your answers.

I am seriously considering it. Carpet up the stairs & hallway.

Hard floors in every room.

We have laminate everywhere except the stairs due to DS2 being allergic to carpets.
They can be noisy upstairs when playing, but arnt all kids anyway. After 6 years I now find carpets dirty to sit on when visiting parents and friends.

Agree Mummytheresa- when we go to my mum's and dd takes her shoes off her socks are filthy off the carpet

We have recently put laminate in Dds room, I wish we had done it straight away really, she had thrown up on her carpet so many times, im loving the laminate its so much cleaner!