Stairs...carpet or no carpet?

[Lovemusic33]

Tell me what you have on your stairs?

My carpet has seen better days but money is tight, if I recapped the stairs I will have to do the landing too. Do I go without carpet? Paint the stairs? Use a stair runner? Or replace the carpet on the stairs and landing?

For those who have no carpet, is it not noisy with kids running up and down stairs?

Bare stairs can be very cold and noisy. Can make your hall echo depends on your house size.

House isn't huge ( small 3 bed ) but the stairs are in the middle of the house, they are the first thing you see when you open the front door so would like them to look nice. Not sure if I could put up with the noise and having to sneak up the stairs not to wake dc's up at night. I do like the look of no carpet though.

Is it possible to compromise and just carpet the top of each step?

Unless the landing is huge it is unlikely to make a huge difference. Do you have a local carpet man? We had ours replaced for a couple of hundred quid.

Meh, I've got two sets of stairs in the house, one carpeted, the other uncarpeted. As long as your bare foot or in slippers the noise difference is minimal, but it is a slight diffefence. I don't have young kids running round though.

However I'd say people prefer carpeted and older people are worried the non carpeted is slippy. Carpeted gives a warmer feel.

Unless you know the stairs are really nice when you take the carpet off, or will come up well with some work, on balance I'd go for carpeted.

I've had both, I'd not have uncarpeted again unless I was in a very warm house and lived on my own. Noisy and cold.

Get a couple of quotes, by the time you've sanded and painted, carpet may not be much more.

If you have kids I'd stick to carpet, safer if they fall.

It can get really dusty quickly if not carpeted or only part carpeted, I prefer full step carpeted but mainly as don't want to clean it more than once a week.

Ours has a runner on it and stair rods. All bought on eBay. As well as heavy duty staples and a trade staple gun. There are lots of vids on YouTube. Have a look. Whole thing cost us £80. And it looks lovely.
I bought some paint from screwfix, a white water based gloss which is fantastic stuff. Did a bit of sanding, knocking in nails etc before I put the runner on. I also painted just the edge sand slightly under where the runner would sit. This meant the kids could use the stairs still. And the fact the paint is water based meant it dried it two hours. Three thin coats two day one then one day three. Two days later laid the runner. I wish I'd painted the edges in black or dark grey though as it would have matched better and showed less cat hair ( tabby cats)
But it's fine as is for now.

Oh and when I got to the top stair I only carpeted the riser part. Therefore the better condition landing carpet remained and the runner and carpet didn't clash as they weren't matching.

We converted our house and put a new wooden staircase in, it looked really good

Six months later I slipped off the top step, went down the stairs like a slide, not just breaking but totally smashing my ankle into bits, I had over 12 surgeries, over 18 months in total in plaster, if we left the house I had to use a wheelchair. It has left me permanently disabled

When the paramedic arrived, he said how many accidents he went to where someone had fallen down wooden stairs

2 weeks later we put down carpet, doesn't look as nice but it's so much safer

Patch I like the look of the runners, where did you buy the stair rods? From eBay too? As the ones on Amazon seem to be around £16 each which is a lot when you need 11. I have seen some really nice runners and they look easier to put down than carpet. My dad usually lays carpet for me but he's away for 3 weeks and I have no patience .