Wood, painted or carpeted floors?

[raisinsarenottheonlyfruit]

Which do you think buyers want most? This is for front room, dining room and stairs.

• sanded wood floors
• painted wood floors
• neutral carpet

It's a 1930s ex-council house.

Sanded wood without a doubt!

Sanded. Don't wax or varnish them immediately and see if you like the look. If not you could paint.

Painted wood floors make me cringe! Especially in hallway and dining room, chairs and furniture can easily scrape the floor and you have to redo the whole lot!

Sanded wood definitely! We've just done this in our house and can't believe what a difference it's made to the room.

I don't mind painted boards but prefer nice sanded and varnished ones. Like PPs, I would worry about furniture marking the paint.

Painted will scratch imo. Sanded wood is the best option but perhaps too expensive for an ex-council house?

Us peoole in ex council houses can have nice things too you know!

Seriously, it's really useful to see what people prefer. I'll price them both up and take that into consideration too.

Sanded wood is the current fashion, so if you're doing up a house to sell, that would be your best bet.

If potential buyers prefer carpets, it's easy enough for them to lay carpets on top of the wood. But if you lay carpets as part of the development, any buyers who prefer wood could be put off by the amount of work, mess and expense that they would incur in having the carpets taken up and the floors sanded after they move in.

Us peoole in ex council houses can have nice things too you know!

Thinking more of the value of the house vs the cost of sanded wood floors. I have laminate floors, not because we can't afford wood, but because the house value doesn't justify spending so much money on it.

The floorboards (I'm looking at them now!) are in pretty good nick.

I can't imagine there would be that much difference in hiring someone local to sand them (we can do all the prep to make sure floors are ready to sand) - and buying and fitting new flooring - would it?

I've paid around £100 for labour for a room of about 12ft x12ft to be sanded by a local lad if that helps. The cost of the machine and sanding papers worked out at about £80 for a weekend I think, maybe a little more. Wax was very pricey and costs about £50 for one room. I've also done it myself many times but hate hate hate doing it!

There is a big cost variation in sanding what you have and replacing with new wooden floors. The skirting boards have to be taken up for a start off never mind the cost of the floor. Sand what you have and buy an inexpensive rug. If the boards have gaps and lots of knots it won’t be great but still cheaper than replacing.

Carpets can be lovely but cheap carpets less so. I think it depends on the look you want and the value of the house not who the house used to be owned by. Around me there are some highly desirable ex Council properties that go for £1/2m plus.

I was in an estate agents the other day looking at their brochure of lovely pictures of houses they have sold.
I noticed that every picture they had chosen had wooden floors apart from the bathroom.

Sanded wood, but carpet on the stairs. Hideously noisy otherwise.