Flooring - Carpet or Hard Flooring?
Cousins is highly regarded as the Midlands’ largest family-run furniture retailer, where you’re able to furnish every room of your home from all under one roof.
One of our lesser known assets is our extensive choice of flooring and carpets. You can floor the whole of your home, whether you want carpets, hard flooring - laminates, LVT (luxury vinyl tiles), wooden floors or vinyls - or just a rug to complete the look.
Cousins are able to meet your flooring needs whether it’s for a main living space, dining room or bedroom, as well as the high wear areas of a hallway, kitchen or staircase. Combining the right level of luxury and style with practicality and durability, Cousins’ flooring and carpet experts will be able to recommend the best solution to suit your lifestyle and everyday needs.
As a member of the prestigious Flooring One group, Cousins offer an enviable selection of the latest designs from the leading brands in flooring all at great value, affordable prices.
As part of a regular monthly feature, we’ll help to answer some of the most important questions in helping you make the right decisions to effectively and efficiently floor your home.
Carpet or Hard Flooring?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions when people are flooring their homes.
The answer quite often depends on what room you’re looking to floor or carpet, who’ll be using it and what are your priorities - price, luxury or practicality and durability.
When talking carpets, there are different types and styles to consider, made from different fibres to suit a variety of lifestyles and aspirations.
Twists being practical and hard wearing, velvets and longer pile saxonies being softer underfoot and suited to bedrooms.
The look and feel of a carpet is also dependent on the type of yarn fibres that are used, both natural and man-made.
If hard floors are your preferred solution, there’s an immense variety to choose from, dependent on budget and the final look you want to create. Luxurious wooden floors can sometimes be surpassed in durability by LVT and laminate floors, whereas vinyls offer a low-cost alternative. Hard and wooden flooring will bring a clean and simple look to your room.
The relative popularity of carpets versus hard flooring is a bit like wallpaper versus painted walls and leather sofas versus fabric ones, in that it often goes in cycles, alternating in demand. Each type has its own particular benefits.
Carpets are softer and more comfortable underfoot, offering greater insulation and warmth, especially when laid over a quality underlay. This may be a particular advantage in bedrooms and casual living spaces, or if you have toddlers likely to crawl around. Use of the correct underlay will also help with the longevity of the carpet.
Carpets are tog rated, the higher the rating the greater its insulating capacity. If you have underfloor heating, we’d recommend a lower rating or a hard floor, albeit we’d recommend an engineered rather than solid wood.
Carpets are also more absorbent of sound and less noisy than hard floors, giving them an advantage in upper floor rooms and apartments. Underlays also enhance a carpet’s sound absorbency. Luxury vinyl tiles and vinyl flooring are also practical to this end.
In most cases, carpets are a cheaper solution, needing a lot less costly preparation than for hard flooring. They’re a lot quicker and less expensive to lay. But you will more than likely have to replace carpet more often.
When it comes to colour options, textures and patterns, there is a lot more choice with carpets. Albeit this is something that you can introduce to hard floors with the addition of a rug.
Carpets can be plain, textured, striped or patterned. They can also be bright and bold or neutral and subtle, plus anywhere in between. You’re free to make a statement or just blend in.
Textured carpets, such as twists, are practical in not showing up all marks and small debris. They’re also less likely to be pulled by things such as pets’ claws. This is something to be mindful of if you’re considering a loop carpet or natural weave floorcovering which are more prone to pulls.
Nothing will beat the beauty of a real wood floor, with its distinct characteristics and luxurious status. Whether it’s laid to a classic plank layout or more ornate parquet design.
Selecting a more textured, rustic finish or one with a more protective finish is recommended in areas of high footfall and with pets and young families.
Hard floors are the most practical, especially where spillages are likely to be frequent, such as in kitchens and bathrooms.
They’re easier to maintain and clean, being less absorbent and only requiring a quick mop, ideal for families and rooms where you entertain.
For the same reasons, they’re also unlikely to absorb dust, animal hair and smells, making them more pet-friendly and practical in high footfall areas such as hallways and living rooms. Hard flooring is more suitable for people who suffer from allergies and is resistant to bacteria.
You can however select carpets with a waterproof backing for kitchens and bathrooms. There are also stain resistant carpets.
Wool carpets are easy to clean and very resilient. Whereas polypropylene and nylon (polyamide) carpets can even be cleaned with mild bleach solutions.
Carpets with a higher ply are denser and likely to be less absorbent and more durable.
If a consumer wants a more natural choice, then wool carpets plus sisal, jute or coir floorcoverings are an alternative to real wood.
There are lots of factors to consider when selecting the correct flooring solution for your home. Why not call us or pop into store and speak to one of our experts, who’ll give experienced and impartial advice based on the room that you’re looking to floor, your lifestyle and priorities.
