carpet on stairs only

WaxiesDargle

I'm getting solid wood (oak) laid in my hallway and I'm thinking about having the upstairs landing done at the same time and just have carpet on the stairs....has anyone else got this and does it look ok?...

people have told me that the carpet should go on the stairs and landing otherwise it just wouldn't look right

suisidevw

I agree it would probably look funny and also feel funny on the feet! I'm personally a fan of wooden floor downstairs, carpet on stairs and upstairs!

WestonDave

You'd have a serious practical problem with what you propose - the carpet to cover the riser of the top step (the vertical bit of wood between the top horizontal step and the landing floor) practically has to be an extension of the landing carpet if you want to have it all. So you either have the landing and the back of the top stair in bare wood, or you have the landing carpeted. It would look seriously odd for the carpet to start part way down. I guess at a real push you might be able to glue the top bit in under the overhang of the landing (if there is one) but you'd need to be very careful it didn't come adrift as it would then be a tripping hazard.

Over the summer we've had our parquet floor in the hall restored and this week have had carpet put on the stairs and landing. I think it looks fantastic but its probably not to everyone's taste as we've chosen quite a strong striped carpet for the stairs and landing. We thought about something plainer but in the end the wood floor looked so good we felt it needed a statement partner in the carpet.

phill99

The problem is always the join at the top of the stairs where the carpet meets the wooden floor. Normally the carpet on the top riser (ie the bit going up as opposed the the 'tread' which is the bit you stand on) is part of the landing carpet that comes down the riser.

Which having a wooden floor, a piece has to be put in at the top of the stiars and creatyes problems where it joins the wooden floor.

WaxiesDargle

WestonDave wrote: »

You'd have a serious practical problem with what you propose - the carpet to cover the riser of the top step (the vertical bit of wood between the top horizontal step and the landing floor) practically has to be an extension of the landing carpet if you want to have it all. So you either have the landing and the back of the top stair in bare wood, or you have the landing carpeted.

spoooky WD...I was just thinking the same as I was walking up the stairs just now...I'm sure I've seen pictures of it done though somewhere....but I'm now seriously having second thoughts and will probably have just the hall done like yourself

WestonDave

If its any help this - http://www.russdalesflooring.co.uk/files/pdf/stripe-stair-runners-venetian-700x1250-B.pdf is the carpet we put on - the Rialto last small picture beside the big one. They've shown them with a matching plain carpet but we've just run the same across our relatively small landing as well. The big picture shows the problem you face - they've tucked the plain landing carpet over the top step and it looks odd.

WaxiesDargle

thanks for that...you are right that just looks odd

sphrp2

Hi WestonDave

I think you must be living in my house, only slightly in the future! I want the exact same staircarpet as yours and also want to run along the landing. I dont know whether to run the stripes the whole length of the landing so that they are at right angles with the stairs, or have a 45 degree join on the landing (like the first two pics on this page http://www.rogeroates.com/gallery/inspiration/ ). What did you do? How does it look?

Thanks for your (or anyone else's) opinion!

Arfa__

Did this in our house. At the top, we just have about 3" of carpet on the landing with a metal strip to separate it from the wood on the landing floor. Yep, we umm'and'arr'd a bit too. But reckon it looks fine.

Parents place did something similar too. However at the top, the landing open out straight away, so they had a rectangle of carpet on the top landing about 1 stair width x 12", but rather than metal strips on the 3 edges, they had it edged properly in a wool pleat, so it just looks like edges on a rug.

Are you having carpet the full width of the stairs, or a narrow walkway in the middle of them? Do like the latter, just more work prep'ing the wood at the edges. Reckon the transition on the top landing would look better with just a narrow strip. Would just look more akin to a rug, going down the middle of the stairs.

WestonDave

Hi there.

We think it looks fantastic, but I'm not sure if I can really help with your problem. We were very lucky in that our landing runs in parallel to our stairs so the stripes run the same way on them both.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/13436017@N06/5062612188/in/photostream/

If you look in this picture you can just see the end of the solid bannister wall top right. Where the carpet continues leads round to the stairs.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/13436017@N06/5062002285/in/photostream/

This picture is taken over the rail looking down the stairs so the bottom of the picture leads to the top of the stairs. What you can see in this picture is that we have a half landing towards the bottom of the stairs where the stairs turn right to get into the hall. We considered the 45 degree choice but it would have been very hard to match, and it would have been a join in the carpet on an area that is going to get a lot of wear.

In your case having a right angle join if your stairs are right angles to your landing would be hard because of the need to run the landing carpet over the edge down to the first stair tread. As I said above you can't really have a stair carpet that starts at the lip of the top step so if you go for the right angles you would have a wrong stripe on the riser of the top step which will ruin the effect. That tends to point to the 45 degree join, but you'll need a very good carpet fitter to get it spot on. Ours was sweating a bit as he wanted to try and get the stair section all in one piece so he only had one chance to get it right with lining the pattern up with the landing piece.

The other thing to consider is to have the stripes down the stairs but have them across the landing. That would depend a bit on how long your landing is - the pattern repeat in this carpet is 25cm so it depends if you feel it would look to "stripey" if you had more shorter stripes rather than the long ones along the landing. This might be more economical with carpet if your landing is around 3-4m long. They'd use the width of the carpet to do the landing, then split it into probably 3 to do sections on the stairs which is normal (it was only because the suppliers sent 5m rather than 4m length for our piece that the fitter was able to do the main stairs all in one).

It is a really nice carpet and although we were a bit scared choosing something that brave, we haven't regretted it. Hope the above helps a bit - sorry the photos are a bit poor - done on the phone.

sphrp2

Thanks for that - even more food for thought!

I'd like a runner with wood visible down side of stairs but OH dead against it. Dunno why. Anyway, I thought a full width striped carpet would be a good compromise, but it has thrown up all sorts of questions, hence the opinion seeking.

(ps thanks for the explanation of the 2nd photo - at first I thought you'd carpeted a small door at the top of the stairs! )