Is a neutral/pale carpet a stupid idea with pets and a messy kid.

[VivaLeBeaver]

Doing up the front room.

We're getting new sofas, brown leather ones.

The walls are painted cream and I'm trying to decide on a carpet colour.

I was thinking that mid brown would be practical but would it be too much with brown sofas? Other option is beige but I'm worried about stains.

Any thoughts or suggestions gratefully received as I'm crap at this.

And I don't want wood or laminate.

Pale is a bit risky! But maybe you could buy a carpet shampooer at the same time and give the carpet a deep clean every few months? Could be quite high maintenance, depends how much time you have for cleaning - and how clean your family is!

We've got pale beige/cream carpet and a messy 4yo DS but only upstairs. I'm not precious about it and shoes etc are not a problem Downstairs I've got oak floor throughout which seems to see off the dirt with a mat before going upstairs.
A pet may be more of a hazard though -looked at a house this weekend where we would have had to replace the 3yo carpet throughout due to the dogs little accidents.

Not much time for cleaning. Dd eats in the front room even when told not to so I'd be worried about spills.

We've got pale carpets everywhere but the kitchen and bathroom. They seem to be holding up pretty well - we have a dog and a cat but no DC.

You would have to Hoover a lot more than I do though

The dogs weeed on the carpet before, she's not supposed to come in the sitting room and the door to it is shut when were out. But dd sometimes forgets to shut the door before going to school so dog then spends the day on the sofa and could in theory piss on the carpet again. I'm going to have to get a brown one I think.

Ours is very light brown, dark beige and is a stain resistant one. We've had it 6 months and no stains so far. We all eat in the lounge from time to time, DD plays with felt tips and play doh in there. And we have a cat.

All spills have cleaned up fine, and felt tip stains have come out with baby wipes.

A stain resistant one sounds promising......and maybe a big rug.

I promise that the brown will be worse than the cream. I get to go in loads of people's houses for work and darker carpets seem to show up every bit of fluff or hair, especially animal hair. We have a wool cream Berber carpet which has been down for around 4 years now, no stains or marks on it. I do make the dc take their shoes off but I'm not terribly precious about it. Are you looking at a pile carpet? Or would you consider a weaved carpet instead?

Now this is something else, I have no idea what makes a carpet "good" as in quality.

What do I need to be looking for? There's twists and Berbers and all sorts of other stuff. Only looked online so far. I'm kind of mid range price wise I'd have thought. Mi can spend £500ish on the carpet inc underlay. Room is maybe 5m x 5m.

I've got a beige /neutral carpet on stairs, landing & bedrooms & it's trashed. DC who walk outside in socks then go upstairs, spilt coffee, vomiting baby. Not to mention the fact that if you don't hoover right to the edges, there's a grey ring on filth
Never again.

Tbh it's personal taste. I dislike Polypropylene and have gone for 100% wool berber with the thickest PU foam underlay to give the floors a better feel. Have a look at underlay not the most exciting website though!! Tbh we found Carpet Right was fine and pretty reasonable but for more exciting designs try alternative flooring

We bought our house 3 yrs ago, youngest daughter was 9 mths and crawling so we went with a (cheap) beige carpet throughout upstairs and in the 2 reception roooms downstairs. Everyone has to take their shoes off and its holding up quite well but its not pristine any more. I certainly would suggest spending alot on a carpet - my view is to expect to replace in say 5 years and bear that in mind with the budget.

I've got beige carpet, a dog and three kids. It looks like a tramp wipes his arse on it.

sorry that should say wouldn't recommend spending alot on it

Right will go for a darker carpet.

We've lived here ten years and carpet looked old when we moved in. Dining room carpet was laid in the early 80s (we could tell from the newspaper used as underlay). The one were going to replace is in the living room and is now worn down to the plastic backing so I can't put off any longer!

I would recommend getting one with a fleck in it IYKWIM. Hard to tell what is dirt and what is the actual carpet. We used to have beige Berber with a darker brown fleck which held up ok apart from in the hall (reasonably priced from carpet right). Now have mid grey with dark grey fleck which is brilliant for not showing the dirt although I appreciate this does not go with your colour scheme

Crumb colour is best.

Don't go dark. We have a navy carpet in our lounge (not chosen by us) and it shows every speck.

I might go for something like this I think, so not too dark and not light.

Obviously need to go see it in real life.

here

I would go for something with a mockled look if you know what I mean that way bits don't show up so much. Plain cream will be a nightmare ( I speak from expereince)

A tweedy beige but not quite cream twistpile will serve you well. The key is the tweediness - it will hide a multitude of sins.

(I sold flooring for years.)

We have beige carpet downstairs. It was laid in 1992. It was marked after about five years of family wear. It is now wrecked and it was very good quality. Next time it will be darker and we are selling this house soon and will lay cheaper carpet to flog it and it will be pale carpet because when it's all pristine it reflects light and lifts the soul.

Definitely a berber with lots of flecks in it - does a much better job of hiding stains than a plain wool.

Viva, I'd recommend the independent carpet/furniture shop beginning with C (opp the huge Next) - their customer service was excellent when we had them recarpet our last house. Their 'man' came to the house with samples etc and the quality of the carpet was very good. When we carpeted this new house, I let dh talk me into using Carpetright (and went for one the same price sqm as our previous one - £12.99) but it's not half so good quality.

Booksandacuppa, we actually got our dining room carpet there as a roll end. I always think of them as been expensive but certainly worth a look while I'm that way. It's either them or carpet right as I think allied carpets have gone bust now. Thanks, I'd kind of put them out of my head because of price but will go and see.