Whether you are in the middle of renovating a home, moving into a new place or simply planning for the future – one of the questions that will crop up is whether you should use a carpet for your living room.
A carpet is a fantastic option for living room flooring. The softness and luxurious feel of carpets add warmth and a homey vibe to the space making your living room a perfect place to wind down after a hectic day.
To select the perfect carpet for your living room, we’ve laid out the groundwork in this post. As you take a look, keep in mind which carpet type might match your home, personal, & lifestyle.
Why We Love Carpet
Our living room is one of the busiest areas of the home. Since it is here where the family members spend their leisure time together, comfort is a top priority. Carpets are so comfortable underfoot and can make your living space feel warm and inviting.
Living rooms should feel homely–a place where you can relax, take your shoes off and play. Having a carpeted floor allows you to stretch out and roll around and wrestle with your kids without worrying about getting bumped.
Carpets are available in a wide range of colours, textures and designs that will elevate the look of your living room.
On top of that, carpets are fairly easy to maintain. You just need to regularly vacuum it–no mopping necessary. They are also more affordable compared to other types of flooring.
An Affordable Investment
Risk of Hardwood
Hardwood floors are beautiful and durable but can be an expensive option for flooring. Seeing a return investment may be dependent on several factors including whether or not the home’s occupants plan to sell; the real estate agent helping in the selling process, the housing market itself, and others.
All types of flooring need to be properly maintained, but hardwood floors, in general, need more long-term maintenance compared to other types of flooring. Aside from regular vacuuming, you may also need to refinish hardwood floors after some time. If not properly installed and maintained, it can get water damaged, rot underneath, or be infested with bugs–all of which can depreciate the value of the home.
A Better Investment
Specifically for a living room, choosing a carpet is a simpler and more practical option for homeowners. When properly cared for, it will last a long time making it a good and cost-effective investment.
In addition, carpeted flooring is an equally, if not more, attractive style option for a living room. Carpet is much more inviting, comfortable, and arguably traditional for living room settings.
Especially at CarpetOne, we offer a wide range of carpets specially designed to cater to your needs. With all the benefits of carpet, by spending less than you would on hardwood flooring, you will actually be getting more.
The Widest Colour Scheme
Carpet will provide you with options within the realms of the entire colour wheel! This opens up so many opportunities to allow you to truly make your home your own and to let your personality show.
Colour affects everything. With your carpet, you could set the tone of the room, match furniture to your flooring, or bring out a theme throughout your home. If your living room gets a lot of foot traffic or maybe social gatherings happen in that room often, you could select a carpet that is darker and would not show stains or dirt easily. Or maybe you want your living room to look larger and more open; you could choose a light coloured carpet to keep the room looking fresh and airy.
Being able to select which colour you would like your flooring to be can make the atmosphere of the living area be and feel however you want it to.
Texture
Aside from colour, texture is another thing to consider when choosing a carpet. The texture and colour of your carpet are important duos that impact the overall look, feel, and atmosphere of your entire living room. Unlike hardwood and other flooring options, carpeting options give you the freedom to find the perfect combination of each and it empowers you to express yourself exactly how you want to in your home’s design.
Texture is much more than how an object is felt: whether hard or soft, or smooth or rough. It also includes visuals such as the pattern on the surface. Carpet texture is largely determined by the type of weave or pile. It is also affected by the material used for the carpet, the density of the fibres, and the height of the pile.
Carpet piles or weaves can be categorized into looped, cut, or cut and loop.
Loop carpets have fibres that are looped back into the backing without being cut. This type of carpet has many variations such as level loop where the loops are identical in height and textured where the loops have subtle height variations to give it a patterned appearance.
Cut pile carpet is a type of carpet where the exposed fibres are cut creating a softer finish. Twist and plush carpets belong to this category.
Cut and loop, as the name implies, has both cut and looped fibres. The height and texture variations of the fibres create a pattern on the surface of the carpet.
Some types of piles are better suited for a certain application. For example, plush carpets are better suited for bedrooms because they are softer underfoot. They also tend to show vacuum and footprints so they are better used for low-traffic areas. Loop and twist carpets are best for high-traffic areas like hallways.
Safe and Soundproof
Safe
Because carpet is softer than other floorings, it is a much safer option to use especially if you have babies, children, and the elderly living in your home.
Carpet can make the living room a great place for babies to roll around easily, play with the rest of the family, and even learn how to walk. It provides an area where they can lay and crawl around the floor with less risk of hurting themselves or falling onto hard surfaces.
For many of the same reasons as babies, carpet is also a safer alternative to hardwood for children as well. It is softer and easier to play on safely. In addition to these reasons, if one of your kiddos happens to drop something, there is less risk of it breaking on a carpeted floor versus a hardwood one.
Similarly, older individuals; those with special needs; and animals can benefit from the practical safety features of carpeted flooring.
Soundproof
The living room is a busy area of the home and can sometimes get noisy. Carpet can help dampen the sound of footsteps as well as airborne noise whereas hardwood flooring has a bit of an echoing effect to it and can carry noise throughout an entire house.
Low Maintenance
As mentioned, all types of flooring must be properly maintained to maximize their lifespan. The carpet is easy to maintain. Vacuuming regularly – twice a week for high-traffic areas, will keep your carpet clean and looking new. Professional cleaning is also recommended every 18 to 24 months.
For spills and messes on your carpet, be sure to clean it up immediately so that the stain wouldn’t set. Use only approved cleaning methods and cleaners for your type of carpet.
Attractive
We could learn a thing or two from history, and the late 20th century got it right. Before re-entering the home decor scene in colour, the carpet had its days of glory as well. Let’s not forget when the carpet was the leader of all the savvy home designs during the ’60s and ’70s.
Although it seems many have forgotten about carpet, it has not been left in history – it’s been keeping up with the times and looking just as good as ever.
Carpet is one of the most versatile fashions for a living room that anyone could use. It could be used to portray Traditional, Industrial, Contemporary, Coastal, Modern, Bohemian, or even Mid-Century Modern styles to name a few.
Because carpet is so customizable with styling options, textures, and colours, a living room could be a luxury room with the right selection – especially because it would come at a comfortable price – truly making it the most attractive option.
Will Carpet Make Your Living Room Hotter?
If you are living in a warm climate you may be worried about whether the carpet will make your room feel hotter – we get asked this all the time. Interestingly it is the opposite!
High-quality, thick carpeting is made up of millions of tightly woven fibres that not only have a very low conduction rate but also trap air. So, if you have the air conditioner on, the carpet help stop the generated cool air from escaping. It also stops excess heat from entering the home, creating a cooler interior temperature.
During winter, excellent insulation means less heating is needed to maintain a comfortable temperature in the room.
So, installing carpet reduces your energy bills and makes your home a generally more comfortable place to live.
Wool carpets are a natural insulator that keeps your home warm in winter and cool in summer. They also feel warm and soft underfoot, adding to your sense of comfort when it’s chilly outside. Thick carpets with high stitch counts make for the best insulators.
Installing carpet over a thermal underlay will also drastically increase insulation and prolong the life of your carpet. Read more about the importance of carpet underlay here.
When should you replace your carpet?
Carpets can last between 5 – 15 years depending on their quality and how it was cared for. Other factors such as climate, water damage, spills and whether the homeowner has pets.
If you already have carpet in your living room, you might be wondering if it is ready for a replacement. Here are the signs that your carpet needs to be replaced.
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Odours can be a sign that moulds or bacteria have taken over your carpet. You can try to hide some stains, but sometimes there is not much you can do. If cleaning your carpet doesn’t get rid of bad odours and tough stains, it is time to replace the carpet
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Carpets with threadbare patches and matting are unattractive and uncomfortable.
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Moulds can be dangerous to your health. Replace your carpet if you see any signs of mould.
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Carpets that have lost their cushioning are uncomfortable and much harder on your joints.
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Old, outdated carpets are not only unsightly but will also devalue your property.
Laying it all Out
Carpet is an excellent option to use as living room flooring. While hardwood may seem like the most popular selection in today’s interior design, the truth is that carpet remains a great option for living room flooring because of its winning features which include the following:
- Carpet is an affordable, budget-friendly flooring option. Compared to hardwood, it is more affordable and much cheaper to install.
- Carpet comes in a wide variety of colours and shades meaning you can make it work in any home interior style.
- Carpet offers different textures. These impact the look of the room and the feel of it as well; they play off of the furniture and give many more features than other flooring options can.
- Carpet is personalizable and can be customizable to an individual's specific needs. Whether someone is looking for eco-friendly options or Australian-made carpets - there is a carpet to meet every criterion.
- Carpet is a safer surface and more soundproof than hardwood and other flooring types.
- The carpet is low maintenance and does not require much upkeep. Especially when compared to hardwood flooring which needs to be swept and mopped rigidly, carpet only requires minimal vacuuming.
- Stylish and attractive, the carpet will set your home apart from others, giving it a unique style.
Keeping these features in mind, we hope you see a few flooring options that could be a good fit for you and your home. When deciding what type of carpet to install in a home consider the room’s colour scheme, design style, physical environment, and the price of installation of the carpet as well as the product itself.
We understand the importance of a living room and that you might have many questions. Please feel welcome to view our site and search the various articles we have written in hopes to provide information regarding how to find exactly what you are looking for in your home. We would also love to help you by answering any questions you may have via phone! You can call us at the number provided and we will assist you in any way we can.
We feel confident that there is a carpet perfect for you, and we hope to help you find it.
If you are in the market for new flooring for your living room, contact a Carpet One store to discover the benefits of carpet and whether it will be right for you!
