Stair carpet runner - good idea?

kdotdotdotdot

I love the look of a stair runner and my biggest regret was being talked out of one by my carpet fitter. Admittedly, it saved me a lot of money, but when it eventually comes time to replace it, then I'm going for a runner.  

The downsides of one are: vacuuming/dusting the sides of the stairs is a little trickier than just vacuuming an entire expanse of carpet. It costs more to have individual stair rods fitted, and if you've a patterned carpet, it's difficult if your stairs twist, rather than being straight up.  And yes, the wood of the stairs will have to look nice.  

FreeBear

If the timber is properly seasoned and carefully selected when constructing the staircase, there shouldn't be any cracks. Unfortunately, with modern builds, they are often in too much of a rush, so skimp on seasoning and pay little attention to the quality of timber. With an older house, if the treads don't have cracks in them, it is unlikely fresh ones will suddenly appear.

shiraz99

At the end of the day it really depends on the quality of the stairs, a good painted staircase with a striped runner can look quite nice but if your stairs are in fairly poor condition then it'll take a bit of work to get it in good knick.

liberty_lily

Nine years ago at a previous house we fitted a Roger Oates stair runner on the staircase between the ground and first floors. It was a bargain ebay buy so there wasn't sufficient to do the stairs up to the second floor (which was in a separate area anyway so didn't matter as much). 

It was a Georgian property with lots of quirky features so the style of runner and stair rods suited it perfectly (imho 😉). No issues such as those mentioned in the earlier responses on this thread and we were delighted with the look! 

Heres a pic of ours....

If it's what you want, go for it OP 😄

kdotdotdotdot

@liberty_lily I really like the look of your stairs, it's what I wanted, but my carpet fitter said it would be really problematic getting the stripe in the carpet to match neatly where the stairs turn near the top so I've had it in mind that I can't do that. What does your carpet look like at the turn?

liberty_lily

kdotdotdotdot said:

@liberty_lily I really like the look of your stairs, it's what I wanted, but my carpet fitter said it would be really problematic getting the stripe in the carpet to match neatly where the stairs turn near the top so I've had it in mind that I can't do that. What does your carpet look like at the turn?

Sorry @kdotdotdotdot, but we sold that house eight years ago and although I've trawled back through old pics I can't find any of the turn 🙁

DH fitted it and I do recall it was fairly difficult to get the stripes to look neat/match at that point...but he's not a professional carpet fitter (in fact it was his first attempt), so I can't see why a professional would have issues 😉