Laminate or Carpet?

Rita_be2

For the lounge I will always go for laminate. We laid our laminate about 4 years ago and it's easy to clean and still looks really good. If you lay it yourself be sure to leave a bit of room around the edges as it expands. A friend of mine didn't adhere to such advice and now has a very bumpy floor in his lounge!

Bubby

Do those of you that have the laminate find it very cold? We have an added issue of our lounge and diner being extremely cold and takes at last an hour to heat up with rads on

helend

Bubby wrote: »

Do those of you that have the laminate find it very cold? We have an added issue of our lounge and diner being extremely cold and takes at last an hour to heat up with rads on

Yes! We have laminate and it is SO cold, but we still can't decide between laminate and carpet ourselves. When we feel the cold its "oh we are definitely getting carpet before next winter" but when the kids spill a drink or food (one big reception room - living/diner) "definitely keeping the laminate":rotfl:

Bubby

helend wrote: »

Yes! We have laminate and it is SO cold, but we still can't decide between laminate and carpet ourselves. When we feel the cold its "oh we are definitely getting carpet before next winter" but when the kids spill a drink or food (one big reception room - living/diner) "definitely keeping the laminate":rotfl:

Ours is a big reception room too and the kids are forever spilling bits of spag bol (the worst on cream carpet!) etc on the floor and although we clean it up straight away it is never completely gone. I am very fussy about smells etc and have our dogs groomed regularly etc so I cannot stand the smell when we wash the carpet (reminds me of wet dog:eek:)

fresian_cow

We replaced laminate with carpet. I like the look of laminate but I find it more of a pain to clean. You have to sweep and mop it to get it clean as opposed to getting the hoover out (and you have to leave it to dry without anyone walking on it). Dog hairs accumulate in clumps in hard to reach places and every mark shows. It is a pain with carpet and paw prints etc but we have a vax and clean the carpet thoroughly every so often and it's fine.

lisal0u

Hiya,

I can see the pros and cons of both so we went for carpet upstairs and engineered wood downstairs. We went for dark wood so you dont notice marks and dust etc so much! We bought ours from http://www.carpentersofyork.com/ and had excellent service! We under ordered by 6 boards and they hunted all over the warehouse to see if they had any boards left (they no longer stocked them!) and they did :-)

We do have the luxury of underfloor heating though and Im not sure I would have wood/laminate without. A friend has laminate that looks lovely but its freezing to walk on!

Its tricky, the carpet upstairs makes it feel much snugger and not slippy but the wood downstairs is more practical!

Good luck with which ever you choose!
Lisa

Bubby

lisal0u wrote: »

Hiya,

I can see the pros and cons of both so we went for carpet upstairs and engineered wood downstairs. We went for dark wood so you dont notice marks and dust etc so much! We bought ours from http://www.carpentersofyork.com/ and had excellent service! We under ordered by 6 boards and they hunted all over the warehouse to see if they had any boards left (they no longer stocked them!) and they did :-)

We do have the luxury of underfloor heating though and Im not sure I would have wood/laminate without. A friend has laminate that looks lovely but its freezing to walk on!

Its tricky, the carpet upstairs makes it feel much snugger and not slippy but the wood downstairs is more practical!

Good luck with which ever you choose!
Lisa

Unfortunately I think that wood would be out of our price range, but we did look at adding underfloor heating due to the cold in the rooms, could you have this aswell as radiators?
We are also going for a dark walnut laminate:)

Foggster

We have laminate in the hallway and porch area but we are dog free.

I would recommend contacting a local independent flooring supplier and get them to fit it as well, well worth the money and cheaper than your big boys. We have a "middle of the range" laminate which is grooved and looks the business. We go from laminate to carpet in 3 areas, laminate to tiles in another and laminate to lino in the kitchen and it was fine.

bex2010

Having never had laminate I can only give you my experience of having a carpet with 2 young children and 2 cats in the house.

We have very light coloured plain carpets which was around mid range price wise. We chose man made fibers over wool as supposedly more resistant to stains and invested in our own vax carpet cleaners which we use occassionaly . This brings the carpet up good as new. For every day spills and orange baby sick I spray with vanish upholstery cleaner which works wonders.

I love having carpet - it looks lovely, especially if you have the same throughout the house, its warm underfood and more comfortable for the children to sit / crawl / play on.

Bubby

bex2010 wrote: »

Having never had laminate I can only give you my experience of having a carpet with 2 young children and 2 cats in the house.

We have very light coloured plain carpets which was around mid range price wise. We chose man made fibers over wool as supposedly more resistant to stains and invested in our own vax carpet cleaners which we use occassionaly . This brings the carpet up good as new. For every day spills and orange baby sick I spray with vanish upholstery cleaner which works wonders.

I love having carpet - it looks lovely, especially if you have the same throughout the house, its warm underfood and more comfortable for the children to sit / crawl / play on.

We also have the same colour throughout and I can see the advantages as it looks very streamlined.....however when our dogs come in from [STRIKE]digging up[/STRIKE] playing in the garden they happily trot their black paws throughout the downstairs and scrubbing it out of cream carpet with 2 dogs who don't just walk through one room is a pain to say the least:rotfl: