carpet vs paint for stairs?

[theory]

Just exchanged contracts on a house and met with a builder today who recommended that we carpet the stairs rather than repaint them. His logic was that /a/ painted floors/stairs wear out quickly and /b/ carpet is better for small children. (We've got a toddler and I'm expecting no.2 in Dec.)

Any thoughts on this? And if we go the carpet route, where to do we buy carpet? (Apologies for the idiotic question-- we're novice homeowners and foreigners to boot!)

Painted stairs - slippery and splintery. And loud. And cold. need repainting once or twice a year to keep looking OK.
Carpet - warm, cosy, longlasting, sound absoribing, just needs a blast with a hoover evry so often.

I have lived with both, and would go for carpet on stairs every time, especially with small DC.

To but carpet - there are big out of town carpet retailers on trading estates, some names I can think of are Walter Wall Carpets and Carpetright, but I have found much better quality at reasonable prices from local carpet shops (look on Yell or Yellow Pages if you are unsure about where they are). You'll also need to account for underlay and a carpet fitter. Carpet often sold through local furniture shops too.

Some big dept stores - John Lewis for example - sell carpet too.

Don't get the cheapest - it'll look awful within a year. Ask for advice on what they recommend for "heavy traffic" areas like stairs.

Ask your builder too if he can recommend any carpet suppliers, I bet he can

We've just had a stripy stair runner put in. I painted the 4" that show either end of the carpet in Laura Ashley Cotton White. It is totally stunning. I now want to live in my hallway. Carpet is by Louis de Poortere; Color.Net 6860. Much better in real life than any picture online! Brilliant quality and will last for years. Got ours from Russdales in Winchmore Hill, North London. Good luck!

Carpet carpet carpet. Normally I'm not a carpet person but the racket of a family running up and down the stairs means it's got to be carpet on the stairs. A runner is a good compromise if you want to keep the airy feel of wood floors.

burcham that sounds gorgeous.

Get the best underlay you can afford for stairs, and a wool or wool mix carpet, as they are a High traffic area. Carpetright cheap and fine.

thanks- this is really useful. Carpet is sounding better and better.

Two more stupid questions: as the stairs are already painted, do you think it would be necessary to paint AND carpet it we did a runner, or could we get away with just carpeting? The builder told me that it would take a full week to paint stairs because of the kind of paint used, and we're very pressed for time. (Have a little uhder two weeks to get the whole house decorated before we're kicked out of our rental.)

Also, what's underlay?

If the paint is in good condition at the outer part of each step (which is what will still show when the runner is down) then I wouldn't think you'd need to repaint.

Alternatively it might be possible to repaint just those outer bits, which would mean you could get away with a less specialist paint (since it doesn't need to stand up to being walked on) - would therefore possibly take less time?

Underlay is a felty or spongy layer that goes under the carpet. It makes it more padded/insulated and also protects the carpet from rubbing against the floor. Definitely worth getting a really good one for stairs.

Agree with Minipie, if you like the paint that is down then keep it. Only problem might be that once new stair runners are in you might wish you had freshened up the paint too? You definitely do not need a week to paint the ends of each stairs. The eggshell paint I used dries in about half an hour allowing you to repaint very quickly!!! And thank-you Minipie, it does look lovely - especially after 7 years of a hallway that was plasterwork covered in my daughter's drawings. I feel that I have landed in hallway heaven!!!

burcham - sadly my elderly stair carpet still has a few years' wear in it, so no excuse for the lovely stair runner...

We have the colour net as well, but 6890. We got it through John Lewis, who as you would expect, did an excellent job at fitting. It is whipped on the edge and fit as a stair runner with the edges of the stair painted. Would recommend carpet on stairs, even if you had hard floors through the rest of your house, just painted is too noisy and too slippery if just in socks.

sorry just read the bit about what paint, we used a regular dulux satin finish the same as a skirting board, we did that part ourselves before the carpet was fitted, you don't walk on the outside couple of inches, you walk up the stair runner! I would say no need for any specialist floor paint.

theory I am curious to know where you come from to know so little about carpet? Is it somewhere very hot?

Burcham

We bought a house that has been magnoliaified to the max, with cheap skanky cream carpets throughout. If i stroke my cat for long we both get an electric shock. The stair one looks awful after a couple of years. I would love a stripey stair runner. Do they work if you have a corner on the stairs at the top iyswim? Was it hideously expensive?

We live in France and no-one has carpet. Tiled floors downstairs, wooden floors upstairs, and a wooden staircase. I think most countries south of the UK don't use carpet.

I miss carpet, especially on the stairs.

BikeRunSki- I'm just a New Yorker who has never hasn't lived in a house since early childhood :) And all my apartments had wood floors and no stairs.

stripeybump - yes, we had a cream carpet before this stripey stair runner. Madness. Bought it while pregnant. Ruined within two years. What were we thinking? Re the runner: it is a runner up the first flight of stairs. Then the small landing outside the room at the top of these stairs, plus the next 3 stairs that you double back on, plus the main top landing are all fully fitted. This is what the fitter recommended and it does work really well. They matched up all the stripes perfectly so they all fit together and run the same way if you see what I mean (ie not vertical up the stairs, then horizontal on the landings. The whole lot is 'vertical' - the same as the stair runner.) It cost £1150, not cheap, but it will last for years and we love it. The first carpet was cheap and in the end was a bad buy. Live and learn!

Hi burcham12! We've just seen this post and we were wondering how your carpet it doing? We hope you're happy with it!

the NOISE without a stair carpet doesn't bear thinking about

Another vote for carpet - uncarpeted stairs are noisy - especially if you have kids pounding up and down them.

We have non-carpeted stairs, in fact with our stairs you couldn't really have a carpet, they are designed to not be carpeted.
Do you allow people upstairs with shoes on? If not or not usually I can't see noise as being a real problem, it certainly isn't in our house. We used a special thick, non-slip vanish on ours, I think it could have been Yacht varnish, and they just need a quick vacum and dust to keep clean. So if you are going to paint I would vanish on top to help it be longer lasting.

In the UK - Carpet every time.
BECAUSE our staircases are built to have it on so are lighter timber and make a noise.
In the USA and the continent the wood of the treads is MUCH thicker so does not make as much noise, or the stairs are actually concrete with a skim of wood.

Carpet runners with white gloss down the sides look great, so long as the carpet is EXCELLENTLY fitted (I use these people www.crusader-carpets.com/) or you have stair rods.

I live in the UK, but I did have my stairs purpose made of US timber (the previous ones were unsafe due to the lack of any kind of bannisters and totally open backs).

Just redecorating my stairs now, The stair was carpet when we moved in and now we want all wood stairs but were advised against it because of the slippery floor for the young children, So we have compromised by painting the stair risers white and putting carpet on each tread, We have a banister on each side of the stair and have colour coded this to the carpet and paint. #bobsyouruncle

bob got any photos? Sounds lovely... We want paint but worried about the practicalities so yours sounds like a good compromise. I've recently spent days hours on Pinterest perving over painted stairs...

We also toyed with the idea of painted stairs only. But our builder suggested runner with white risers, so in the end we went for this and we're quite happy with the end result.