Nice but impractical cream carpets downstairs, horrible colour upstairs - what would you do/prioritise before moving in?

[Pepperminttt]

FTB here so new to making these kinds of decisions.

We’ve found a house to buy. Not sure if it’s a forever home but we could definitely stay there a long time. There are some things we’ll need to save up to do, like redo the kitchen.

The flooring is mostly in decent condition but not what we want. The carpets upstairs and on the stairs are a horrible colour. The hallway and living/dining room have cream carpets which are nice and currently immaculate but totally impractical - we have a cat and are TTC, and I think any carpet is impractical in rooms where people eat meals, go outside and back in, etc (both out front, and the living/dining room is the only route to the garden).

Once we’re further down the line we plan to get quotes to put some kind of karndean / hard vinyl in the hallway and living/dining room (we’ll do the kitchen floor later when we redo that room) and change the upstairs and stair carpets to something nicer.

The way prices are going, I imagine we may have to prioritise and just pick one. What would you choose?

Changing upstairs is more for taste than practicality. Downstairs would be for practicality, but the current downstairs carpet really is fine - it just won’t stay that way. So head vs heart, but the colour upstairs really is vile.

What would you prioritise if we can’t afford both? And will either one be harder/easier to do once we have furniture in? It would you leave it all and just live with it?

I would do the upstairs ones first and save for what you want downstairs. Easier and less invasive of personal space to move the furniture around downstairs to do the floors in future.

I would do the downstairs in hard flooring and see if I could get a carpet fitter to fit the cream carpets taken up into the bedrooms.

Oh actually that's a really good idea! Never thought of moving the existing carpets but could work really well.

I didn’t think of this! Thank you!

Otherwise I think @CluelessHamster may be onto something. Especially as I’m not sure what furniture we’ll get for downstairs so it seems like a big, early commitment to choose a floor colour.

I would do as suggested, move the cream carpets upstairs and have eg wooden flooring downstairs. Its easy to refit carpet, have done it many times (including moving nice cream sitting room carpet to a bedroom),.