Easy-clean carpet advice

Loads of polypropylene carpets are bleach cleanable, and look good too. My advice would be a polypropylene carpet at around £20/sqm and purchase a "family" Vax or similar. Also consider the underlay. Do not get a cloud 9 type foam rubber underlay, get a crumb rubber one that is 1. extremely durable 2. Doesn't compress like a foam type underlay, and so much better for stability for the less mobile amongst us.

Oh and pay attention to my signature! I've worked in the carpet trade.

Yeah as above, a lot of carpets now are bleach cleanable, ideal for me with mud lovint dogs!

Trust me on this, I've got 80/20 in my house. However given the circumstances a polypropylene is going to be much better. We had contracts with insurance companies where we would go out to a customers/claimants house and attempt to clean a stain. Amazing how many owners of polypropylene carpets were disappointed when we got the stain out, they were expecting a new carpet.
Now the point of saying "bleach cleanable" carpet is mostly marketing, you wouldn't normally use bleach, for a start it doesn't smell nice.

The point is more that it (almost) doesn't matter what you put/spill on it, you'll be able to get it out. In my mind the main disadvantage is heat damage, if you are inclined to iron on your carpet (and you'd be surprised how many people do) or smoke in the house a wool carpet is much better. A polypropylene carpet will melt, a wool carpet will char from a cigarette burn and a bit of faffing with a blunt knife will sort it out.

Just to be clear about the costings for the carpet PAY about £20/sqm ignore the "was", "reduced from", " from next week £XX buy now " THEY ARE NOT REAL PRICES AND NEVER WERE AND NEVER WILL BE. I worked for 2 years for a large carpet retailer and the only time we didn't have a 50% off sale was when we had a 60% off sale.

Using a room 4m x 4m (13ft x 13ft ish) fitted from a chain would be roughly

16sqm carpet @ £20 = £320
16sqm underlay @ £7 = £112
16spm fitting @ £3 = £48

Total about £500

As you can see from the above if you cut the carpet down one at £10/sqm (verging on the carp end of the spectrum) your total bill goes down to about £350. Bearing in mind that there are also fixed costs in producing a roll of carpet (transport/stocking/cutting etc) you are getting a carpet of less than half the quality for only a 30% discount. In my mind £20/sqm is about the sweet spot for carpet in a quality/cost tradeoff, with a bias to slightly more if you are looking at wool 80/20, where I would be looking at £25-£30.


If there is already carpet there you wouldn't need any gripper, you may want new door bars at £10 each, they may try to sting you for delivery @ £25.

If you are prepared to do a bit of research, be available for deliveries and contact fitters directly (and have little/no guarantee or comeback) you can get that down to and £200/£60/50 with door bars at about £3. So a total of about £350.

I source my underlay and accessories from tradepriced, carpet from a shed (but I know the manager) and fitting from a contacts list in my phone that is too large for my own good.