Carpet vs Timber Floorboards in bedrooms

Question

Hi everyone,

Would love to get some opinions on flooring for the bedrooms in my Victorian house renovation.

Once renovated, our house will have 2 bedrooms downstairs in the original part of the house and 1 bedroom + study upstairs in the new (modern) part of the house.

We had originally decided that the downstairs bedrooms would be Tasmanian Oak floorboards (the rest of the downstairs area will be floorboards) and the upstairs bedroom + study would be carpet for noise reduction and comfort.

I personally don't really like the look of carpet in Victorian homes and have been debating with my husband (and in-laws - joy!) about whether to also put carpet in the two downstairs bedrooms.

Carpet is around half the price of floorboards, so it would save a small amount of money (around $1500).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

ProjectPete · Answer

I much prefer the look of floorboards and generally speaking they're easier to maintain.

I've got carpet in my master at the moment and will be pulling up shortly to replace with floorboards (and that's in a 5yr old house.

Carpet feels nice on the feet but is higher maintenance and shorter life. Good to consider the increased allergy risks with carpet too.

The only reason I'd consider carpet for your top rooms only is noise reduction.

I believe the floorboards help with resale value too,especially in a home like yours.

Hope this helps

Hay · Answer

I'm a big fan of rugs and I work with them so I have a few! I love the look of rugs on floorboards so we went floorboards throughout for that reason. We live in a small apartment though, so a different situation.
I also love the easy clean factor.

Jason · Answer

@KingStreetReno

When we moved into our current house the first thing we did was pull up all the carpet, including the bedrooms.

The carpet looked something like this so wasn't really our taste:

To our joy we found the floorboards were in great condition so later we just had to polish and seal them. 10 years later we would never go back. We love having floorboards - so easy to clean and they look great.

We did the reverse in our first home - put carpet over floorboards in an inner-city Edwardian (in the bedrooms only) because we thought it might make the bedrooms warmer and more cosy but regretted it later. It's so much harder to keep clean and looking good, and it didn't really make the rooms warmer.

Jason