Should I install carpet on hardwood floor?

[Anonymous]

Um... Area rugs can cost thousands of dollars to get large enough ones to cover the desired area. My whole living room is hardwood and I have babies that are crawling and learning to walk and we looked into pre padded carpeting that we could lay on the hardwood and it would only cost a few hundred to cover the whole room but an area rug the size we needed was $1,200 so no area rugs are not the cheaper option if you need it for a large space. We haven't figured out a solution yet to the issue of the hardwood. As for the cold hardwood floors are cold on the feet even if you have the best insulated house on the planet. The only way hardwood wouldn't be cold is if your floors were heated. If you can find a safe way to carpet with minimal or no damage than I say do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd never, ever put carpet over hardwoods. Carpet just looks cheap. I'd do an area rug instead.

Second this. If you get a rug that is close to the size of the room (maybe just a foot on each side of wood showing) tripping won't be a big issue.

[Anonymous]

You just need to setup your rooms with the proper furniture and layouts. Don't ever cover hardwood except for maybe in a bedroom for the brief time you have a baby learning to walk. Covering hardwood with carpets is disgusting and tacky.

[Anonymous]

Area rugs. Don't worry about the edges. You can put padding under the area rugs that will hold them in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd never, ever put carpet over hardwoods. Carpet just looks cheap. I'd do an area rug instead.

Absolutely agree.

Completely agree.

Add warmth with an area rug, curtains/panels, upholstered furniture, a comfy throw, puffy ottoman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Um... Area rugs can cost thousands of dollars to get large enough ones to cover the desired area. My whole living room is hardwood and I have babies that are crawling and learning to walk and we looked into pre padded carpeting that we could lay on the hardwood and it would only cost a few hundred to cover the whole room but an area rug the size we needed was $1,200 so no area rugs are not the cheaper option if you need it for a large space. We haven't figured out a solution yet to the issue of the hardwood. As for the cold hardwood floors are cold on the feet even if you have the best insulated house on the planet. The only way hardwood wouldn't be cold is if your floors were heated. If you can find a safe way to carpet with minimal or no damage than I say do it.

You can get an area 10 by 13 foot area fug for under 1,200. It won't be fancy. Just get something basic. But honestly, the wall-to-wall carpeting isn't fancy either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those of us who live in the north where winters are very cold, hardwood floors are beautiful but hard to live with. Unless you run heaters under the floor, walking on them during the cold months -- which here far exceed several months of warm -- is unbearable. You'll need to get out of bed and immediately put on socks and shoes and keep them on. That's the temperature side. Personally, I have walked into many homes in many areas with wide expanses of uncovered floor and the homes do not feel inviting, cozy, or like you want to settle in. Sterile comes to mind. Contemporary and cold in feeling, not temperature. Plus there is no noise reduction possible from those bare floors. Even throw rugs don't accomplish noise reduction and they break up a large room. A friend put in berber in her large living room. That looks really nice and does help with the noise reduction. It buts up to a walkway area that they tiled with a dark stone. Looks great.

There's a reason, folks, that people of yesteryear opted to move away from their wood floors used for decades and decades.

Personally, I'd never live in a modernistic, contemporary home filled with wood floors and tiles. I'd also never buy a new modern home. Ugh. Doesn't feel like a nest at all.

that's why they make slippers.

You can get a berber area rug and a pad cut to fit underneath it. You get the same result without having to use tack strips and install wall to wall carpet.

Um, most older houses have wood floor and tiles. wall-to-wall carpeting is a relatively modern invention. Remember, vacuums weren't common until the 1930s. So there really was no way to clean carpets that weren't flat enough to sweep and that you couldn't take out and beat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't listen to these morons. High grade, high end carpet is definitely ok to do in a family room. From Houzz:

This one is made of a linen and wool mixture. Gotta go with taupe! Warm, luxurious and classic…
<div></div><div style='color:#444;'><small>Traditional Bedroom by Minneapolis Interior Designers & Decorators Billy Beson Company</small></div>

OP wants carpet so that more people USE the family room. For a room that gets a lot of traffic, that carpet isn't going to stay looking like that for long, unless you get it frequently cleaned, which is not good for the wood flooring underneath.

[Anonymous]

If you have kids, why not get Flor tiles and build your own custom rug. If you don't like the size, add more tiles

[Anonymous]

OP, it sounds like we have the same layout as you. We can't put furniture on any wall in our living room, though we don't have an alcove. We have a custom cut sisal rug. We ran it with about 4" around the perimeter stopping in front of the fireplace so, the doors have a bigger "gap" then 4". We also have a bookshelf on one side, so it stops in front of that hallway. You can cut around the floor vents like we did, keeping the same 4". So, two short ends are straight, the other sides are cut around registers.

It looks great, and we've gotten compliments. Not issue at all with tripping. At some point, we'd like to do an area rug around one seating are to define it. We have two seating areas back-to-back, one is a couch and the other is two chairs. One side has a fireplace, the other a TV. GL!

[Anonymous]

Hardwood is not cold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hardwood is not cold.

Agreed. That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Unless it's in a basement. Then it might be cold, but carpet would be too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hardwood is not cold.

Agreed. That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Unless it's in a basement. Then it might be cold, but carpet would be too.

For crying out loud, she did not mean literally cold. She meant "cold" as in "not inviting".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So, if I go with a non-installed bound carpet, should I run it all the way to the walls and cut out spots for the registers/vents? Or should I leave a 2-3 inch border of hardwood around the room (and still cut out spots for the vents).

You should do neither of these, and get an area rug that fits JUST the seating arrangement, as long as all the rugs are under the front legs of each piece of furniture.

Better yet, you might be better off with an interior designer at an hourly rate to help with furniture arrangement. sounds like, even though you may have a huge room, you have a layout problem and maybe you need to get a shorter sofa and arrange it differently so the back is not to the kitchen (I agree, that doesn't sound ideal).

This. Or figure out the biggest rectangle you can fit and have an area rug custom cut to that size, though no closer than 1 foot from any wall. The carpet will define the room.

In new housing wall to wall is usually there because people didn't pay the upgrade to get hardwood floors, so it looks cheap because people associate it with cheapness.

[Anonymous]

Our house had area rugs that were carpet cut to fit exactly. They stayed out so well we were surprised you could simply lift them up. Only the edge next to the entrance of the room needs to be bound (binding is a significant expense). The ones in our house were not bound at all and managed not to look scruffy, but binding would be better. We removed them because they were really old but would have considered keeping if in better shape.