Remodeling or redecorating your home offers opportunities to improve its function and appearance. Consider the proposition of hardwood floors vs. carpet in the bedrooms.
Carpet has advantages, including sound dampening, warmth, and added insulation. However, it also has many disadvantages. The disadvantages of using carpet in the bedroom outweigh the advantages.
5 Disadvantages of Using Carpet in Bedrooms
Carpeting has its place, but not in the bedroom, which should provide a healthy sanctuary for an individual. Let's consider why carpet shouldn't become your main flooring material in the bedroom.
1 - Carpet Traps Allergens
Wall-to-wall carpet offers easy-to-clean flooring, but vacuuming doesn't lift most dirt, dust, hair, and other allergens. Those items get ground into the carpet's pad by clinging to it and causing allergy attacks.
Even in the healthiest people, its entrapment of allergens can trigger runny noses and sneezing. Carpet can trigger attacks in those with allergies or more severe respiratory issues, such as asthma.
2 - Cleaning Issues
If that wasn't enough of a cleaning issue, the carpet stains easily. One slosh of red drink mixed onto the floor creates a challenge that professional cleaning has yet to remove. Carpeting also picks up shoe stains, and chewing gum easily sticks in its yarn.
Regardless of the pile depth or the underlying pad, carpet easily becomes so dirty that it changes color. This requires steam cleaning or carpet shampooing to clean it and restore its original color.
3 - Releases Chemicals into Your Home
New carpeting can off-gas or release chemicals into the air during and just after installation. Chemicals, such as formaldehyde, are used to make the carpet and enter the air in your home during installation. Like the allergens issue, those with existing respiratory illnesses exhibit sensitivity to these chemicals. Their release can cause serious health problems.
4 - Carpet Doesn't Offer Recyclable Options
Unlike wood, which a demolition team can remove and process, so it becomes reclaimed or salvaged wood, you can't reuse carpet or carpet pads. Some carpet installers haul the ripped-out carpet to the landfill for you when they install new flooring, but that only saves you from dealing with its disposal.
5 - Styles of Carpeting Change Quickly
Just as fashion changes quickly, so does interior design. Remember the gold carpets of the 1970s and the avocado-green appliances? That quickly became outdated, as did shag carpeting. Interior design's essentials for décor change every few years. The only way to save your carpets from going out of style remains to choose a medium pile in a neutral shade like cream or sand.
Better Alternatives for the Bedroom
Interior decorating offers many alternatives to using carpet in the bedroom.
Heated Floors
Heated floors solve the problem of needing carpet to create a warm environment for your feet during winter. Choose from radiant-heated flooring or hydronic heating. Both heat a room's flooring well, but hydronic heating requires 30 minutes to an hour to heat up.
Radiant heated flooring doesn't require a whole-home installation. You will need to replace the flooring in the room to which you add radiant heated floors, but if you're reading this, you plan to change your bedroom floors anyway. Options for covering this type of heated flooring include:
- Nailed hardwood
- Floating hardwood
- Laminate
- Vinyl.
Most radiant heated floors raise the flooring elevation by about an inch. Exceptions include Environ heating mats and TempZone floor heating elements. All types of this heated floor attach directly to the subfloor. Installing heated flooring materials costs between $10 and $20 per square foot. Most home improvement websites consider it a do-it-yourself project and ideal for treating a single room or an en-suite.
Laminate Flooring
Many laminate options also block sound, plus you can self-install them. Laminate flooring looks like real hardwood but costs much less. It also offers numerous style options since manufacturers make it look like natural hardwood. If it scratches, you must replace the floorboard since sanding the laminate won't work.
Hardwood Floors
Any hardwood offers an ideal flooring option since they provide an easy-to-clean flooring option with no allergens. Since hardwood offers a natural flooring material, it involves no chemicals in its development. Choose from an array of wood options in a variety of color schemes. If it scratches, many options exist for buffing out the scratch or sanding the wood to a smooth surface again.
Engineered Hardwood
Engineered hardwood looks like natural hardwood and does use real wood in its top layer. Choose a product with more than one millimeter of wood on the top layer for the best results. That allows you to sand the floors in the future without removing all the top layers.
Using Throw Rugs or Room Rugs
Barring that, use hardwood flooring in the bedroom and add a room rug and a runner. These two matching smaller rugs let you enjoy the comfort of carpeting without the hassle.
When cleaning a room rug or runner, pull it up, carry it outside, and beat it. This process removes most of the dust and dirt from it. Flip it on its back and vacuum the reverse side of the throw rug first. Turn it over so the top faces up, and vacuum it again.
Shampooing these smaller carpets also proves an easier task. Some small room rugs you can toss in the washing machine for cleaning.
Plan and Purchase Your Floor at a Hardwood Flooring Store
Visit From The Forest to plan your bedroom flooring project. Shop our extensive selection of hardwood, engineered hardwood, reclaimed wood, and laminate flooring products. Check out our wall and ceiling materials for more ideas for your bedroom remodeling project.