Full width stair carpet or runner?

[Willow33]

We have finally decided to get a plain dark purple carpet for our stairs but need to decide if a runner (which I have always had in my mind) or a full width one (which carpet retailer recommend) is best. The full width is cheaper but not by a significant amount.
Any thoughts?

The ground floor hallway is wood but the upstairs landing has a caramel coloured carpet.

Given you're going to have a different colour on the stairs, I'd personally go with full width, but it's really difficult to tell without seeing the stairs/landing carpet and hall floor. Would it work if you went for a runner with the whipped edges matching the caramel on the landing? Or, on the assumption that the wood is a deep, rather than light shade, maybe go for one or two shades darker than the caramel - that way you could subtly draw all three in together.

i love the look of a runner but worry that the edges would collect dust and it would annoy me

I used to have a runner - the dust bunnies which constantly gathered on each side nearly drove me mad!

When stair carpet was replaced, I went for full width and now the dust is spread about more evenly

I have a dark (navy) runner and white steps.

It needs cleaning CONSTANTLY. Go full width - and a flecked carpet, if you can.

Full width - far easier to clean one surface than be faffing about with a different type of surface on each step.

We have just had a runner fitted, and it does seem to need dusting pretty much every day to keep it looking good, so I slightly regret it. The other thing I hadn't taken account of was that our stairs have a large 'nose' which means that when viewed from sideways on (standing in the hall, looking through the balustrade), the carpet looks 'gappy' as it stretches from the nose back to the base of each riser. The carpet shop have offered to come back and tack it down under each nose, but am not convinced that will look very good either - so look at the shape of your stairs first. On the other hand, it looks pretty amazing when you stand at the bottom of the stairs and look up (and it's just been dusted!) We went for a subtle stripe picking up one of the colours in the hall tiles - very nice.

personally I'd go full width for an easy life. However the contrast to the landing carpet looks better with a runner than full width IMO, and a runner would be much funkier.

Unless a runner is made in the factory to that width, it always looks a bit crappy as you have to have the edges turned under and you can see the backing through the pile, when you look from the side.

It's also really bulky.

Just don't do it!

Actually, the company that did ours had it bound for us (whipped) in a colour of our choice - so that is an option.

Thanks all for your useful comments. As a result, we have gone for the full width.

Excellent choice!