Buying living room carpets - where do you even start?

[anapitt]

I have not bought a carpet in 20 years.
My living room is big ( about 8 m square )
Please tell me about buying carpets

Get the best underlay you can afford. Makes a big difference. Also, we got scotch guarded ones and they clean very nicely. Useful with 3 DC's :-)

Take a sample home.
They organise carpets by colour, and sometimes one looks like a medium brown in the shop by comparison, but when you get it home it's cream or was a year ago thanks DC
Not bitter or owt though.

ok thanks! any other advice?

Decent underlay, carpet suitable for high traffic areas, think about whether you want 80/20 mix (80% wool and 20% man made) or 100% man made with stain guard etc? usually comes down to budget - but don't assume places like carpetright are cheapest. We used Aldiss for a few carpets recently and surprisingly carpetright actually couldn't beat them.

When they fit it, ask them to leave decent sized offcuts so you've got spare in case of accidents.

Oh, and if you've got a cat don't get loop pile!