Does everyone really change the carpets when they move house

[Flickersy]

(Inspired by a few threads)

I've seen quite a few posters say they have to put down new carpets when they move into a house, or at least get rid of the previous owners carpets.

Now if they're irretrievably stained, ripped, or blindingly hideous, I would understand it. And perhaps I'm too used to living in house shares and rentals where you just have to live with whatever's there.

But I'm hoping to buy somewhere this year, if I'm lucky, and frankly having to change all the carpets isn't an expense I'm factoring in. Unless they're in such a condition which renders them unusable, I plan on changing them slowly over time as and when it's needed. Is that completely slovenly? And if so what else should I be watching for?

Everyone has different ways of doing things, no one's way is right or wrong.

I'm looking at selling soon, and was wondering on the carpets thing. Our house has 2 downstairs bedrooms (townhouse style) however we use one of them as a home gym. Obviously it is not outwith the realms of possibility that a new buyer would want to use that as a bedroom. We had budgeted to replace the carpet eventually, but the house came with that cheap beige 'rental' carpet that you mostly seem to find in rentals and we thought we might as well just trash that as a gym floor. Would a buyer look through this on the viewing if we offered to change the carpet before they moved in, or offered them our cash budget to do the carpet? My worry is if we change it to facilitate the sale before we list the house, we still have to keep the fitness kit somewhere so it will still be in that room, we'll still need to use it as a gym and so it will potentially spoil the new carpet. It has had those rubber mats down for the duration that you'd find in kids playrooms and the like, so it's not full of sweat etc but it has definitely had grease from exercise bikes, treadmills, weights etc all over it so being cream it is decidedly grey in places now no matter how you clean it. If buyers are going to rip it up anyway then replacing it is massively wasteful, but it being one of the first rooms you'd see on the viewings I think it's not a great first impression. To be honest, I'd probably look to do flooring to my taste in a new place within the first year so as long as the floor wasn't full of creepy crawlies i'd not mind too much on condition, but I don't know if that's common

@shams05 so non Muslims are not entitled to new carpets due to religion? I think he might get himself in trouble with that discrimination.

why can't you use prayer mats as people do in work places hotels etc or if you must, replace the carpet in one room.

ps: I don't drag dog poo through my house just because I'm not Muslim.

I love that your twisting yourself into knots trying to find what you want in my post. I didn't say anything about non Muslims, just trying to explain our reasoning for changing carpets. Dad goes out of his way to change carpets between tenants but especially so if the new tenant is a Muslim and the old ones were not. Solely for the reason I've said. A rug is fine but praying 5 times a day, I'm not going to come down in the middle of the night to pray on the one rug, I'll pray in my bedroom where I've also changed the carpet to meet my needs.
It's not a compulsory action. I'm not forcing it on you, just explaining to OP why we do what we do.

Why does it bother you so much that I've budgeted for new carpets? I'm not forcing you to do the same?

@Lurkingandlearning

its not thoughtful, it's discriminatory. You're only worthy of new carpets if you're Muslim, otherwise they're good enough for everyone else.

@TeresaCrowd

personally, as a buyer, it wouldn't cross my mind, that you'd need to do anything about it. I'd happily put down whatever flooring suited me once I'd moved in. Depending on what the other rooms are/garage etc I'd possibly be using that room for my bike (bicycle bike, not motor bike 😂). Or general storage. Or office, who knows, but I wouldn't want you to go to the expense of carpeting it without some discussion between us.

Does the carpet look ok for the photos?

it wouldn't bother me, but lots of people are unable to see past things like that? If it looks awful, could you just put down a really cheap matting or rubber mats under/around your equipment.

unless of course you are prepared to store the equipment & turn it into a bedroom.

depends on how well houses are selling in your area too.

Always new carpets throughout for us every time we’ve moved. Twice, we have moved into rented inbetween houses which is a pain but also gave us the time to decorate and change things like the carpets before we moved in. (This isn’t the reason we rented though! 😂)

We've been here more than 20 years and some of the bedroom carpets are still the ones we inherited

I replaced all carpets when we came here as the previous owners had cats and youngest DD is allergic to them.
Otherwise no, unless they were dreadful.

We changed some but not all. Downstairs is all hardwood flooring so all fine. The three bedrooms on the 1st floor were all relatively new so they stayed but the carpet on the staircases, landing and master bedroom (we have a 3 storey house) were pale cream, very worn and stained so we did change them all as soon as we were able to.

if the carpets were decent and a colour that I liked I’d have just had them cleaned

Well it is wasteful. It's factual.

Nope - I'm always broke when I move house, and that's the last thing on my mind.

Today, at the age of 47, I have had a new carpet fitted for the first time in my life, and that was only because the one there when I moved in looked at though someone had killed one of the aliens from Aliens on it. And even then, it's been over a year since we moved in. And only one room, not all of them - I can live with the rest.

Carpets are filthy. I have never had a carpet that doesn't run black when you shampoo it, even if it looks clean on first inspection. They harbour bacteria, skin, food, mud, bits of pet. And worse. A lot worse.

I can just about handle my own bits of pet. Other peoples, no thanks.

Take them out, replace with hard flooring and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Do you ever stay in a hotel bed or sit on a train seat?

I'm with you on carpets being grim, but we are all living in a festering heap of bacteria. Fun fact - only about a fifth of your body weight is your own body cells: the rest is bacteria. There is no escape, and it's generally best not to worry too much about it.

But lots of things are filthy, objectively speaking.

Your phone, handbag, keyboard etc are probably quite a bit dirtier than an average household carpet. Most people's jewellery is pretty horrible.

The key question is whether is does us any harm or adversely impacts us in some tangible way (i.e. does it smell).

As I said, I've lived in rentals with some fairly dodgy looking carpets. As long as I avoid eating off them I seem to get away with it...

@Walking2024now30days
Reading between the lines of your posts tells me everything I need to know about the kind of extreme you are!
Op asked a question, I was just giving her our reasoning.
Read into it what you may.

A lot of hotels have hard flooring. Easier to clean after accidents.

Same with trains. Getting vomit out of carpeted seats is much harder than hard surfaces.

My attitude towards carpets I think is because I have spent a lot of time in Nordic countries where houses are kept ultra clean and the British obsession with carpets is looked on with a mix of fascination and horror.

I see your point. I’m now thinking the poster I responded to was just trying to wind people up as she didn’t reply to my question. Laminate would be so sensible 😁

Some we lived with for over a decade, even though they were old and hideous 1960s/1970s jobs. They got changed over time when it was their 'turn'- when we re-did those rooms. Here we have some horrible ones of the same vintage, plus one on the stairs/hall/landing that I thought was horrible too, but have got used to and sort of like now in a funny way ( though it's getting threadbare and coming to bits in places and will have to go eventually). I think that maybe having to find a wall colour that went with it for now (very tricky) got me sort of invested in it.
What did surprise me though, when we sold our last house, was that getting fairly basic but decent bog-standard-grey carpets in some of the rooms to make the house look a bit more 'fashionable' didn't cost as much as I'd have thought. So if the carpets you end up with are uncleanable or too horrible for you to cope with, replacing them may not cost too much.

I would, if carpets were to my taste, but they're not. I'm glad I live in a place where wood floors are the norm.

I think you're painting yourself further into a very sticky corner here.

Some people do appear to think that having a new kitchen and bathroom is 'necessary'. It's only 'necessary' if the current fixtures and fittings are, e.g., not working, or leaking.
We can all be guilty- I'm apt to say 'we need a new bathroom' when ours works fine, it's just 1980s, inconveniently laid out, obviously worn and shabby no matter how much I clean/polish, and ghastly to look at. We don't 'need' a new one. We just want a new one. (and I'd love to have a shower over the bath too). But because I know that it is just a 'want', we have lived with it for four years, and it's scheduled for replacement next year, probably, provided other more important jobs get done this year.
A fair number of people on here talk about 'needing' a new bathroom when their is only a few years old, and are doing it when they also claim to be (and often are just after moving house) financially stretched. It's ridiculous.

I think a lot of people overspend and sometimes even get themselves into financial trouble because they are unable to differentiate between 'want' and 'need'. If it's just a 'want' then you buy what you have enough spare money for, or save up for it. Getting things like that 'on tick' is for when you need them. If you don't think that way, or you're the sort who has no self-control and will be deciding you 'need' the most expensive fittings out there because some advertiser, influencer, thread here, magazine or video tells you you must have them, don't ever be tempted to buy a doer-upper.