Carpet out of fashion?

[mattinla]

My question is if carpet installation has declined massively and is out of style, who is even using vacuum cleaners? I now understand why there are gazillions of Kirbys for sale; these huge monsters and similar, were made for the age of endless carpeted living rooms and hallways before the open floor plan revolution brought on tile and linoleum. I tell you though, I live in an apartment and I dig my low nap generic WTW carpeting, it requires some maintenance and steam cleaning 3-4X a year, but I can lie on it, meditate on it, makes it comfy and nice, makes a huge, huge difference I hate cold wooden floors that echo, bring it on. I do see the annoyance of WTW carpeting in some 5000 SF home, vacuuming / steam cleaning is a big, big job - but for smaller apartments, it really works........

 

[gottahaveahoove]

I , personally, love Oriental rugs

They are all over the house. The entire house has oak flooring, except for the bathrooms, which are ceramic tile. The only thing 'carpeted', is my room, with White Karastan, and red Karastan going through the hall and down the stairs.
I have Hoovers everywhere, including attachments. Yes, Pergo, etc has invaded the home scene recently, rendering a regular vacuum cleaner almost obsolete.

 

[lesinutah]

Carpet

You can't see what lies beneath. In the housing market a wood floor or stone tile/flooring creates more value than carpet. Usually under carpet is plywood planks. In older homes wood flooring was underneath carpet. I like carpet in my bedroom and walk areas.
I did mention carpet used to be put on top of solid wood flooring. This to me could mean that carpet had more value than wood flooring.
Wood flooring is in right now. They could come out with engineered carpet.

 

[gottahaveahoove]

Real wood floors are also easier to care for now .

They're sealed, coated with polyurethane, etc. Gone are the days for hand waxing, buffing, etc like before. I use to go on my hands and knees past waxing, using the Hoover buffer, etc. I refinished all of the wood in the house.
It's a lot easier. But, some do love a soft carpet when they get our of bed. It kills me when I KNOW there is hardwood UNDER wall to wall. But, they are not my floors.

 

[human]

Yes, the trend since maybe the 1990s, even in apartments and modest, spec built houses, has been away from wall-to-wall carpet and toward hard floor surfaces like wood or tile. Vinyl flooring has also fallen out of favor since then. Both carpet and vinyl peaked in popularity in the 1970s and '80s and as others have mentioned, it became popular in that era to lay carpet directly on top of plywood sub-flooring. What was the point of putting down wood if it was just going to be covered up with carpet? My house, built in 1970, has only two rooms with wall-to-wall carpet—the living room and my master bedroom. The other two bedrooms have wood parquet floors that look to be original to the house and I put vinyl in the kitchen and bathrooms. I've got Persian rugs in several rooms on top of carpet or wood flooring. The hallway and dining room have some sort of cheap laminate wood flooring that was put in before I bought the house. I'm not sure what was there originally but the laminate in the hallway was ruined by my old HVAC system, which sprang a leak, presumably from a condensation line. The system was replaced two weeks ago and I was hoping the flooring would relax back into place as it dried out but most of the planks remain curled up at the edges. I'm thinking the most cost effective fix will be to put down carpeting but that will have to wait a good while until my bank account recovers. The square footage is fairly small so a nice size remnant would probably do the job. I've had two many unexpected major expenses lately to do anything at all about it right now.

 

[eurekaprince]

I guess I'm dating myself, but I have always preferred lots of carpeting - preferably wall to wall plush - in all the rental apartments I've lived in. In the cold of a Canadian winter, I find that the carpeting also provides an extra layer of insulation between me and the apartment below, especially since I lay down a nice deep rubber underpadding under the carpet. I've always liked to sit on the carpet and read or even sort papers and it's always more comfortable to assemble a piece of Ikea furniture on a nice soft carpet. It's also easier on my bare feet and it's much more comfortable to do my morning exercises on something soft and plush. Besides this, it also provides a good sound barrier so the neighbour below me does not get too disturbed.

 

[blackheart]

It may be out of fashion

I'm sticking to carpet! I helped a family member re-do their wood floors it took us about two days to finish sanding it then another two to stain and apply polyurethane. I'm not about to do that process again anytime soon! If i move into a house with wood I will carpet the **** out of the place!

Besides my hatred of the refinishing process without carpet so many of my vacs would feel useless.

 

[huskyvacs]

If I had a choice in the matter I would still have wall to wall carpet but when you have a bad cat that decided to go on every corner of the house until the smell was unbearable, that put an end to my carpeting. There was the original 1950s hardwood floor underneath so I kept it, and just added one large area rug to the living room, and a medium size area rug in each of the bedrooms, a runner in the hallway, and that's all.

My basement still has commercial grade low pile carpet, but it desperately needs a full cleaning and refresh.

The HGTV and home renovation era of 2002+ really is what killed off carpeting in homes and still is today with germophobes and other people that think carpet is gross.

When you have high-shed dogs, flooring is best because it just collects itself into tumbleweeds in corners and under furniture, easier to get at.

Also the Kirby does have a hard floor nozzle attachment, and the myriad of tools for furniture and wall vacuuming, so the fact of having no carpet doesn't mean a Kirby is useless either.

 

[bagintheback]

Carpet is Out!

Wood floors (Pergo, authentic, faux, ect) are in! I have a few family members that follow current interior design closely and everyone (at least with enough money to spare) is putting in wood. My parents are very slowly ripping out the carpet and installing wood when it's affordable. Here in Arizona, especially in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas, there's also has a lot of tile. I imagine some people like it, but it might be because housing is getting so expensive that a good amount of homes are now investment properties/rentals, and it's easier for landlords to not have to rip out carpeting with a bad tenant. Model homes in new developments often have berber carpet in bedrooms, but of course "builder's grade" carpet, usually tan medium-pile, is entry level.

I think it's a good choice. It's easier to pick up liquid messes to just mop instead of getting out a carpet cleaner. I'll always love some carpeting since it's nicer to vacuum, but if that wasn't an interest of mine, the ease of maintenance of quality hard floors wins almost every time.

 

[cbimmer]

Ive designed a couple of homes and prefer carpet in bedrooms, media rooms, and informal living rooms. I like porcelain tile everywhere else. I can't imagine having tile or other hard flooring in a sophisticated home theater though. Bad for acoustics. The next home I design I'll combine a home theater with music studio. With 12 ft ceilings if I put tile in there it would be an echo chamber!

 

[thevacomaticiec]

Now a days not many vacuum can clean carpets well its all abg less battery powered crap ......

Back in the 50 60 70 80s all vacuum brand had a power head electric hose and upright would groom well
Now a days carpet is out the window people dont want to deal whit it or clean or anything thats my take on it .

 

[marks_here]

In this house here

There is carpet, real wood floor and laminate. Most of the older homes here have all white plush carpet, white berber and rolled linoleum flooring. Now the newer homes have manufactured wood flooring and interesting thing they used to offer CV's but not anymore. I've been in many older homes here every CV @ that time were installed there wasn't one particular brand. As stated I prefer carpet as it adds a layer of warmth in the winter especially when we had the ice storm here w/no power for 2-3 weeks. Generac made a killing on home generators after that!!

 

[human]

Blackheart's description of his wood floor refinishing nightmare brings to mind a wood floor nightmare of my own. About 25 yeas ago, my dad gave me a bunch of self-sticking oak parquet floor tiles that he had bought and never used and I got the bright idea that it would make a good DIY project to put it down in place of the worn carpeting in my dining room. The adhesive backing was old and wouldn't stick to the concrete slab so I decided get a can of adhesive and stick it down the old fashioned way. Ugh! I felt like I was in hell! It took an entire weekend to put the stuff down but the mess I made was unreal. I only used about half the tiles I had and I although I had originally thought of putting it in the back hallway as well, I quickly abandoned the idea and when I put the townhouse on the market, I stacked the remaining boxes of tile in a creative manner to cover the mastik on the one of the dining room walls. I have never had any desire to put that stuff down again, which is yet another reason to carpet my damaged hallway.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Contrary to popular current opinion, vacuum cleaners aren't ONLY for carpeting, or even floors, and there is a such thing as canister vacuums, although you won't likely find them at Walmart...

 

[madman]

Well, wall to wall carpeting might be 'out' but that doesn't mean by any stretch that carpet is 'out.' Area rugs are kindof the thing now. Have wood or tile floor, and use are rugs as interior design accent pieces. Besides, I think it's still common to do wall to wall in bedrooms. More cozy that way, and less often do bedrooms need to have attractive interior designs.

 

[tseg]

We have a 1930's house with wood flooring, except for the finished basement and back of house bump-out with wall-to-wall carpet... but within next year will be putting wood or tile in bump-out. Lots of Persian or area rugs in all the other rooms. Makes things super easy to update the look of the room every so many years. My Miele C3 with Parquet Twister is amazing for wood floors.

 

[suckolux]

I still have the 1946 Red/white oak floors that sadly need redoing, so I am doing the paste wax on my knees still!! Pretty but slippery for a week or two and yes the cat hair can travel even with daily cleaning. The kids just did over their large home,many cracks in their concrete floors and somekind of quiet bamboo laminate?? They had pretty wall to wall, but their big kitchen / dining area had bit spanish tiles that hid dirt really well and needed cleaning more so that tracked to the carpet,shampooing every couple months, 3 pets not helping. Begged them not to do it, not just the thousands of dollars but noisy and cold. Well now you can see the floor rise and fall too! Home sound system sounds bad now, not sure he can adjust that out, only one set of drapes and a couch for soft surfaces. I said you will have to dust mop or something daily, well they don't.....,

 

[brando_husky]

I just want to find a house here in Vegas that has carpet. Every home ive ever looked at or been in has no carpet at all. They are entirely tile throughout the house. 

 

[lesinutah]

Dave

Im going to offer a test you should try. Get a gallon or two of distilled water. It has to be distilled. Heat up the distilled water but don't burn yourself.
Mop a small portion of your floor not heavy on the water. If you use enough that the water will dry up after a minute. Try doing a small area.
The reason I mention this is I believe it's a better way to do your floors. We sealed our oak floor the first 8 years here. We did pine or orange sealer. We used our bissell symphony and steam mopped our oak floors and it cleaned up the wood. It brings out original color and the wood seems to be healthy. The sealers darken the wood.
It's much easier and faster than dealing the floors.
If you don't want to that's okay id just mention it.