Questions about carpets for a first time buyer

[Handsnotwands]

We’ve never bought carpets and my preliminary research has left me with
more questions than answers

how much is an average cost per sqm?

how on earth do you deal with the furniture? We’d like to do 3x bedrooms and the stairs and landing. Bedrooms are full of furniture. How do you clear the rooms to have it fitted? I think we’d need to dismantle beds and wardrobes and even then where would they go? the thought of that is enough to put me off and possibly why we’ve had floorboards for a decade.

i feel it would look better having the same colour / pattern throughout but our rooms are different colours and finding something that suits them all is…difficult

then there’s the actual type of carpet. I generally shy away from polyester / plastic type materials but I think for a carpet wool isn’t the best material?

i think I prefer like a flat material rather than a tufty type. Is this a possibility?

I’d probably start with what is your total budget and speak to the carpet retailer about the price range that will fit into. It is quite acceptable to get a more expensive/hard wearing carpet for stairs and landing and less expensive for bedrooms. Many manufacturers will produce the same looking carpet in different weights so it is easy to get the same look, but it will vary in price.

In terms of the fitting the rooms will have to be empty in my experience, which sounds like it’s going to be difficult but accept the temporary chaos.

We have always had wool carpets, three different houses, at least ten years in each. Standard mix used to be 80/20% wool/ nylon, it’s very hard wearing. I used to work in the carpet fibre production industry and wool was always premium, with some man made fibre mixed in. I believe man made fibre carpets have improved a lot over the years but I’d always choose wool. However I’ve heard that some people have had moth issues, I’ve never experienced this. We’ve always carpeted after initially decorating so the rooms have been largely empty each time, but we are about to completely re carpet our house and know it will be a horrible few days moving furniture around.

Always buy a reasonable quality underlay too, it’s false economy to buy decent carpet and put poor underlay down, it won’t wear well. In terms of the pile type it’s purely personal choice, but I’d avoid anything with loops if you have cats!

Oh and we’ve always accepted the offer of scotch guarding, or similar, to make spillages easy to clean up.

I usually aim for about £20-30/sqm, including the best underlay, though my Crucial trading hall and stair runner was £47/sqm!
As fur furniture : if it's just a bed they can usually work around it, if a room full you will have to get as much out as possible.
They have duality come around to measure so can tell you how much furniture they can work around.
Do not get pattern - I'd stick to a nice neutral, maybe with a fleck in it. If you want more colour you can always layer a rug on top. I normally do stripes on stairs/landing carpets though as you can get away with more pattern there.

I get 80/20 wool mix, not fluffy and the best one has a fleck in it - it's been hard wearing and hides general dirt well. Worst was my first ever carpet, a cream polyester thick carpet in the bedroom that looked worn and dirty less than six months later.

I measure up myself so I can get an idea of budget - carpets come in a fixed width eg if your room is 3.5m wide by 3m long, then the carpet needs to be 4m wide and you'll be paying for 12m2. But always get the shop to come out and measure up as well.

I've just had 100sq metres of carpet laid in 3 bedrooms, 1 landing and 2 stairwells. I went with the same colour, it runs so much better, a good underlay and a decent hard-wearing carpet. I'm sure carpet right would have been cheaper but went with a local family run firm with a great reputation and it cost me £4000. For fitting I was able to move most things and store them around the house but furniture shells and beds, which were taken down, had to be moved from 1 bedroom to another and back again once carpet was down, this was decided and agreed with the shop as I am a single mum and only had a 12 year old helping lift furniture and I did not want him helping me carry bulky furniture upstairs. In total it took 2 days, expect a lot of banging, carpet debree and dependent on what backing there is to your new carpet, some slight scuffing to paintwork on walls and skirting.

We just had new carpets fitted in the bedrooms of our two bedroom flat and I was dreading clearing out the rooms.
We used a local independent carpet shop.
They could work around beds and wardrobes as long as they are emptied and the mattress removed from bed frames. So actually it was relatively easy to get the rooms ready (although we have fitted wardrobes so they actually only needed to work around the beds).
If you go into a good shop with a rough understanding of what you want and your budget then they should be able to advise you of your options.

I’ve had wool and poly and definitely will aboid wool in future as even the ‘moth proof wool’ gets motheaten if the wrong insect flies in trhough your window 🙈

Moving furniture is a pain, if moving house most people try to get carpets fitted before move in, but fitters are often willing to help A BIT with furniture ask an independent carpet shop.

Re furniture you normally do clear the rooms completely before fitting though sometimes can pay a fitter to do this as well but will add to cost. It can make it tricky if whole house needs doing.

Cost per square metre will vary a lot and depend on quality and where you buy it from, you can get quotes though and places like Carpetright have prices on site (would not recommend them but will give idea of costs). Different rooms sometimes have different carpet types depending on usage.

Some people have light carpets the same throughout light a light beige colour but that is really personal taste. Also some carpets are more cleanable than others and worth taking into account especially if you have small children or pets. Pets I prefer floorboards / something can clean thoroughly quickly. Definitely worth getting decent underlay.

Some carpets are a lot flatter than others, I prefer the flatter type especially with cats but its personal taste really. Worth getting a shop to measure as well . You could always start with a few rooms and do rest. Some people have carpets just upstairs, mainly for cleaning, so downstairs where shoes/food are can be cleaned more easily but its really up to personal preference. Patterns can date so would avoid those unless you really want one. I also used to look at Rightmove as see what others had and what I liked. Personally would not have in kitchen or bathroom due to dampness.

I'd recommend trying an independent carpet shop. We have a few locally and they are significantly cheaper than the national brands.

Don't forget to factor in underlay, as you will need that as well, plus carpet strips, to cover the joins between room.

Agree with getting carpet with some flecks of colour in it. Growing up, we had carpet which was just a flat colour and showed up literally every bit of fluff on it. We were constantly having to vacuum it, but it always looked like we hadn't.

Our carpet fitters have always been able to work around the furniture. Remove as much as you can from the rooms and leave the big items like wardrobes and beds. Empty the wardrobes /chest of drawers and the big items can be shimmied out of the way.

Don't get dark single colours as they show the bits. Looking bitterly at cranberry coloured bedroom carpet. Get ones with a variated colour.

Don't feel that you should get the same carpet throughout. Do it on a room by room basis. See carpets as part of the decor of a room.

How have so many of you had a good experience with wool? Mine was a disaster. Water spills (from my niece and nephew) left stains that never disappeared. Just plain water, no squash. We replaced with synthetic and it's lasted much longer and could even be bleach cleaned if necessary.

Oh thank you. This is all so useful, I’ll have a good read through all your comments