Carpet Colour Inspiration Needed

pinkteapot

I'm going to redecorate our lounge and dining room. Both are through routes as the downstairs layout of the house is like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55127243@N04/6730758543/in/photostream

The walls are going to be a light cream (probably Dulux Barley White). We have a brown leather lounge suite and oak furniture (dresser in the lounge, dining table/chairs in the dining room).

I always go for cream carpets. Always. But, I know that in this case it is just not going to be practical. It needs to be a carpet for high traffic and we're planning on having kids sooner rather than later.

The dining room is south-facing and gets a lot of sun through the patio doors. We have blinds which keep the worst of the sun off the carpet but we will want something relatively fade-resistant.

I don't like blue or red carpets. MrTeapot definitely wouldn't go for purple. Green? Maybe but I'm not quite convinced...

Feeling completely uninspired. Any suggestions? I've always been much better at choosing paint colours than carpets. And with the two rooms adding up to about 30 square meters, it's going to be a lot of money if I get it wrong.

We definitely want carpet for various reasons, so not laminate/wood.

p.s. This photo shows the current colour scheme in the lounge - been looking forward to getting rid of the terracotta paint since we moved in 18 months ago! (not our furniture - this is from the Rightmove listing when we bought the house)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/55127243@N04/6730787029/in/photostream

Hintza

When you go looking for carpets you will just be amazed at how many shades of cream-beige-oatmeal there are.

Escaping from that is a problem.

We wanted something like Coral for upstairs (think we ended up with what you would call a dark pink) I wish we had gone with more of a Russet colour.

There are some interesting ones that we saw that had a nice fleck in them that I thought might cover a multidude of sins (beige/oatmeal sort of colours) problem is I can't remember who made them.

Please steer clear of the sheds they will rip you on unedrlay and gripper.

We paid £30/m2 for a 55 or 60oz 80:20 laid inc grippers etc (underlay we bought seperately online).

vasseur

I have a lounge diner and you walk straight from my front door into the lounge so potential for walking mucky shoes straight through the house :mad:

We have a medium-dark browny grey (although it is neither of these colours IYSWIM) coloured carpet. Dark mink maybe?? I couldn't tell you the exact shade or make because it was put down by the previous owner 3 months before we moved in. I can say that it still looks as good as the day we moved in nearly 5 years ago. It goes up the stairs too so is obviously hardwearing. I think this is probably what you need to go for with such heavy traffic - a stair carpet.

gingin_2

What about a striped carpet? you could go for a cream/ beige base with brown stripes if you wanted to play it safe. Lots of varieties about. I am hoping for a candy coloured one for my stairs.

pinkteapot

Thanks for the ideas. I'm going to look at patterned. I rented a flat once which had a patterned carpet similar to this:

http://www.unitedcarpetsandbeds.com/t/flooring/carpets/p/wiltax-isfahan-ivory

Hideous, but it was amazing. Could get away without hoovering for weeks, and I once dropped a whole takeaway pizza on it and you couldn't tell.

A subtle pattern or at least a strong fleck is probably a good way to go. The upstairs was done a few months ago with fairly light cream carpet throughout and it's lovely but you can see every bit of fluff on it.

MrTeapot would probably like stripes - as patterns go they're relatively manly.

blossomhill_2

pinkteapot wrote: »

I don't like blue or red carpets. MrTeapot definitely wouldn't go for purple. Green? Maybe but I'm not quite convinced...

Howzabout a dark teal? It's neither green nor blue and lots of accessories around in teal at the moment

Grimbal

what about a textured carpet? That way the wear should show a bit less than a normal tufted carpet. I like these sort of ones myself. You could go for a dark beige/coffee/mocha type colour, which would go quite nicely with all of the natural type colour scheme you have going on with the walls and furniture

Mayflower10cat

Another vote here for a subtle, earthtone striped carpet. My neighbours have one up their stairs and it's marvellous. It survives teenagers and cats and still looks classy.

Rikki

blossomhill wrote: »

Howzabout a dark teal? It's neither green nor blue and lots of accessories around in teal at the moment

My sister had teal carpets and the effect was quite striking.

I have pale green carpets with a faint diamond criss cross running through it. I have had two children play and grow up on this carpet and it still looks good. It comes up lovely after a steam clean.

Hintza

Striped carpets are very now. How will they look in 10 years time.

pinkteapot

Thanks again for all the ideas. I went to a local shop that stocks a wide range this morning for some more inspiration. I really liked one that was patterned but in a sort of marble pattern. So the pattern was subtle but I think it'd be enough to hide the odd mark. It was in shades of brown - sort of beige through to mid brown. So not quite cream.

It was a ludicrously expensive carpet so I was just working out how I'd persuade MrTeapot to go for it, when I noticed that the widest roll it came in was 3.6m. What use is that! Lounge is 4.2 x 5.2 m. Ho hum.

I went off stripes having looked at some - they just didn't really appeal in the flesh. I like teal as a colour but I'm not sure I want that much teal in the room. A pattern incorporating a bit could be nice though.