To carpet the stairs , or not to carpet the stairs ?

[Debris]

We had a nasty vomiting incident a couple of months ago , which led to us removing the stair carpet. We are living with the stairs as they are at the moment , which is basically dark brown paint , not actually slippery , but not very nice looking. At the bottom of the stairs in the hall is quarry tiles. At the top on the landing is laminate at the moment , but will be stripped pine eventually. My DH fancies just stripping the stairs and painting them a nice colour with a proper floor paint. Im not sure . What would you do ? If we carpet them again , it will have to be a fairly cheap carpet , as our house needs a lot of work , and is a bit of a money pit tbh. All advice gratefully received.

If it's not noisy then I'd leave it until the children are old enough not to vomit on the stairs i.e. 19 or 20

It would be very noisy without a carpet, no? Most of our house is stripped floorboards, but I'm glad we have a carpet on stairs/landings. Especially as my DP and DS are like elephants .

Also not sure of safety - do you have small children? Bare wood might be a bit hazardous.

Runners (ie carpets that don't come to the edge) look nice on stairs IMO.

surely at 19-20 the vomiting starts again?

Stairs can be noisy .. we have a runner but its a dust trap on both bare sides but cuts ot the noise

i thought 19 or 20 was the age when they start vomiting on stairs again after a night out at pub and kebab

We have bare stairs...keep planning to do something with a runner to make it safer for the sprogs but never get around to it, so they just learn to do other stairs with carpet on first....not too noisy and v easy to keep clean.

Our stairs are wooden - can't stand carpet.

We had bare floor-painted stairs for many years. We put a runner when ds arrived which is tolerable. Agree it's a terrible dust trap at the sides if like me you don't vacuum every day

wooden stairs here as well, for the joy of our neighbours I imagine.

to add: I am convinced that wood is less slippery than carpet (but I concede a lot more painful if you slip just that once.) None of us has slipped, yet.

we have just taken the carpet off our stairs as it was trashed. have had them varnished with the up bits (technical term that ) white gloss. looks great & the noise isn't a problem. we've got a rug for the half landing.

Thank everyone, Im going to go for painted / varnished. I must admit they have been a lot easier to keep clean without carpet on. Noise not really a problem , they are very solid, as it is an old house , dont sound too hollow iyswim. Like the sound of varnished with painted top bits , treads , or whatever they are called. Ooh I fell so much better when Ive made my mind up about something !

The bits that go up are called raisers the horizontal bit is the tread - just having a new wooden staircase fitted and no carpet will go on there - its a wee bit expensive all custom fitted in oak. Haven't put on the special sealing stuff yet but its much better than our old stairs that sloped at an angle and had carpet. Its already steep enough (doesn't comply with building regs) but what can you expect in such an old house. Its looking lurverly and my DW fancies big hunky Dean the carpenter - maybe this is why she keeps coming home early .

We've got varnish stairs & with small kids it's perfect as easy to clean. They go barefoot or non slip socks/slippers.

ooh yes wooden stairs!
wipe them down after brushing rather than not hoovering them.

We used to live in a house with an arts and crafts staircase and coped with DCs from baby stage up. Now have pink carpet with stains and dog hairs ingrained (even though dog doesn't go upstairs).

wooden is lovely, we have wooden with natural flooring runner which is fab but was quite pricey. also depends on how wide your stairs are. if you will have stipped at the top with no intention of carpeting, i would keep them uniform. you might need to check quality of stairs ie nails etc and just remember that wooden stairs will be dustier.