When looking for a new floor for your house, you are being bombarded with a huge choice of flooring materials. All the manufacturers claim that their product is the best and you should choose their over the competitor's one.
Two of the most popular flooring products are carpets and wooden floor. None of them are perfect and have advantages and disadvantages. I will try to go through some of the pro's an con's of both.
Carpets
They have been used as a floor covering for many centuries of years. They come in a variety of colors, designs, thicknesses and are made using a huge range of yarns. The most popular yarns are wool, polypropylene and nylon.
Advantages of carpets:
- almost infinite palette of colors and designs
- comfortable to walk on
- they thermally insulate the floor
- they are easy and cheap to fit
- they keep around 90% of allergens on the floor, stopping them from becoming airborne
- they provide a better sound for the room since the carpet stops the sound bouncing off the floor
- carpet provides a sound insulation between floors
Disadvantages of carpets:
- carpets can easily be permanently stained
- they have a shorter life span than wooden floors
Wooden floors
Wooden floors have been used by man since for more than 2000 years. Wood stands out from other materials through it's durability, look and variety of wood essences available. A well maintained wooden floor should last more than 100 years without the need to replace it. It has some disadvantages though. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of solid wood floors.
Advantages of wooden floors:
- long lasting
- easy to clean
- a wide variety of wood essences and colors
Disadvantages of wooden floors:
- expensive to buy
- costly and time consuming installation
- almost no sound and thermal insulation
- easily scratched and marked
- needs a lot of maintenance to keep it looking good
- needs constant brushing / vacuuming
- suspicious to warping and buckling if installed incorrectly or not dry when installed
- sensitive to even low amounts of moisture
Above were some of the advantages and disadvantages of wooden floors and carpets.
Choosing the wrong flooring materials can be very expensive. Carpet is a lot more versatile than wooden flooring due to the fact that it can be made from a wide variety of fibers to suit any environment. Carpets are easy to install and quite cheap when you compare them to wood flooring. They come in a wide range of colors and qualities, from the classic wool twist carpet to the most modern nylon saxony. Carpet are very easily integrated in your property's color scheme due to the fact that it comes in a huge range of colors and designs.
The easiest way to compare carpets and wood flooring is to walk into your nearest carpet shop and see what they have to offer. There are a lot of internet retailers that sell carpets and wood but it is difficult to tell the real colors and feel of a carpet just by looking at a picture.