Carpet on Stairs (Ideas and difficulties?)

ST1991

Hi all.

Our first home has been ours a few months now, and we are getting around to the flooring in some aspects of the house.
We want to put carpet up the stairs to make it less noisy than the bare wood that is there at the moment. All other rooms in the house will be laminate/tile as i dislike carpet, and it makes it easier to keep clean for my asthmatic husband.

Is it tricky to carpet stairs yourself? We have laid the laminate ourselves easily.
Also, is it normal to have the adjoining landing and hallway to the stairs carpeted too? Or could we lay laminate through the hallway/landing and just carpet the stairs...? (Think it may look odd)

Last question, has anyone had stair carpet fitted and have ideas on cost?

It's a straight staircase of 12-14 steps (can't remember off the top of my head today!)
The landing is small (1m x 1m) as the top of the stairs takes you left/right straight into either of the bedrooms). The hallway is narrow and 3M long.

Silvertabby

We have laminate in the hallway and (striped pattern) carpet on the stairs, and I certainly don't think it looks odd, although we do have the same carpet on the landing.

Have you thought of a stair carpet runner instead of a fitted carpet? You'll need to do something about the gap on each side of the runner (paint or stain) but a runner with stair rods shouldn't be too difficult to fit. You'd need to buy a special carpet runner though, as it would need to be finished on either side.

Jamiesmum

You don't need to carpet the hallway leading to the stairs, as for the landing it depends on how your doors are. We've only got a 4ft by 4ft space and 3 doors each side of that so we just carpeted that tiny bit but have laminate everywhere else.

Do you have children? If not laminate on stairs is possible and can look really great (in my opinion).

Personally we have half and half, we have carpet on the actual steps and wood underneath. We always get lots of lovely comments on it and did it ourselves too.

http://carpet.vidalondon.net/carpet-or-laminate-er/

Like that. With carpet on the small landing, but laminate in the hallway throughout downstairs.

kathrynha

We used to have laminate in the hall and carpet on the stairs and landing and it looked good, but now we have carpet for the lot.


I can't remember how much it cost, but some places offer free fitting with the carpet, though you will probably find the carpet costs more.
I advise measuring up and going round a few places to get some quotes.


I also like the idea of a carpet runner. I would have loved that, but our stairs don't look nice enough.

ST1991

Jamiesmum wrote: »

You don't need to carpet the hallway leading to the stairs, as for the landing it depends on how your doors are. We've only got a 4ft by 4ft space and 3 doors each side of that so we just carpeted that tiny bit but have laminate everywhere else.

Do you have children? If not laminate on stairs is possible and can look really great (in my opinion).

Personally we have half and half, we have carpet on the actual steps and wood underneath. We always get lots of lovely comments on it and did it ourselves too.

http://carpet.vidalondon.net/carpet-or-laminate-er/

Like that. With carpet on the small landing, but laminate in the hallway throughout downstairs.

Thanks everyone for the feedback and ideas!

That does look fab with carpet on top and wooden risers! Did you say you fitted that yourself? It looks quite difficult...!

The stairs as they are are in pretty good nick (wood is solid) so a runner might be a good idea! I guess we could do that more easily too with some stair rods. Don't know if that's the right term... but that's what they look like!
I just worry about what it would look like at the top of the stairs, as a runner wouldn't cover the gaps in floorboards...

Laminate on stairs is a GREAT idea! We did see some 'quick fit' type panels in B&Q for stairs that had a wooden lip along the edges but they were mega expensive. Not sure how else you would fit laminate without great difficulty...