Hard flooring has become the dominant trend across North America over the past couple of decades. Is there any reason why you should keep your carpet anymore? As with all things, that depends upon your situation.
Is carpet totally dead?
There was a time when most homes and businesses, at least in my part of North America, used carpet as the flooring of choice in most areas. But there has been a massive trend toward replacing much of that carpeting with hard flooring and installing mostly hard flooring in new builds.
There seems to be one major exception. The use of carpeting remains strong in many non-food commercial settings, especially over large areas like hotel lobbies and hallways – even in most hotel rooms – airports, casinos, and so forth. It’s easy to install on concrete, which is never perfectly level. It helps to deaden sound and it provides a warm, inviting aesthetic. It comes in an endless variety of colors and patterns. Carpet is also a lot more resilient to high traffic. In other words, such establishments still value carpeting for these and other reasons.
It’s also a lot easier and faster to clean such large areas of carpet versus polishing and/or waxing hardwood, laminate, linoleum, or tile. Cleaning companies like mine also use low-moisture systems, like VLM encapsulation – VERY popular in commercial settings – because low-pile commercial carpets will be dry within 30 minutes. That, and the quietness of VLM cleaning, means that often such cleaning can even be done during regular business hours!
Carpet remains alive and well in many busy commercial settings
The residential flooring situation is a whole other matter! Where carpets once dominated main living areas and hallways, these areas are now commonly covered with laminate. Carpets in the modern home are now mostly found only in bedrooms and/or basements.
As I stated in the intro, is there any reason as a residential homeowner or landlord why you should keep your carpet anymore? Is the trend away from carpet trying to tell us something, like that it is now “bad” for one or more reasons?
Actually, there are several reasons why and where carpet is still the better option. First, we’ll consider the reasons why.
Why should you keep carpet?
Carpet deadens sound, so it’s perfect in areas where you don’t want an echo. That expansive living room area, especially one with high ceilings. That large basement. That room where you’ve set up musical instruments for jam sessions. Without carpet in such areas, they become an echo chamber.
By this, I mean physical warmth. In the dead of winter in regions such as where I live, carpet retains warmth far better than hard flooring. Therefore, I find that carpeted rooms stay warmer for longer once heated, whereas non-carpeted rooms feel colder when the furnace is not running. I believe this a key reason why I still see carpet in many bedrooms if nowhere else in a house.
This is what I would also call “aesthetic warmth.” It’s pleasing to the eye when you see a carpet, especially with the many design options available. But even seeing just that soft, cushiony layer does something pleasing in the spirit of a person, especially during colder, darker times of year. A hard floor just seems “cold” when one looks at it, even if it has a similar color to a nearby carpet. I believe this another key reason for the continued popularity of carpet in bedrooms.
There are several reasons why and where carpet is still the better option
Even if you’re wearing slippers – and especially if not – it’s just nicer to walk across a carpet, again especially when the weather is colder and darker. I believe this is the main reason why I still see carpet in many bedrooms!
It’s also perfect when there are young children or elderly people around. Regarding children, one might argue that dealing with carpet stains is not worth the hassle of keeping carpet. However, if you can find a carpet cleaning service in your area like mine that is willing to do a service call just for stain treatments, then the rare occasion when you need to treat a stain is far less of a hassle than the likely many more occasions when a child is going to bail face-first onto the floor. In which case, a soft surface is a much better option than a hard one! There is a lot less crying and way less potential for physical injury, including with the elderly.
Carpet is a lot friendlier than hard flooring for children – and the elderly
You might be surprised to realize that the biggest air filter in your home is not that pleated thing you have to replace in an air purifier machine every few months. The biggest air filter in your house is actually wherever you have carpet installed!
Have you ever noticed “dust-bunnies” swirling around whenever you walk across a hard floor surface? Carpet traps these and other airborne contaminants – including the many you cannot see – until you vacuum them up.
HOWEVER, there is one caveat, as I note in this post: “All air filters reach their limit … Carpet as an “air filter” works only as good as the degree to which you keep it clean. Thankfully, a well-maintained carpet can last a very long time, unlike the air filter that you need to often replace in an air purifier, furnace, or car engine.”
I detail in another post the best way to keep your giant “air filter” in top condition!
The biggest air filter in your home is actually wherever you have carpet installed!
Where should you keep carpet?
Let me first state the opposite, namely where one should NOT install or keep carpet. It would be foolish to install carpet in a kitchen, dining room, or bathroom – basically anywhere water leaks and food & drink spill would be most likely to happen. This is a trend that has not changed over the decades. We seem to have retained at least of the “common sense” (which I now call “uncommon sense”) that people had back then.
But what about the areas in a home where carpet was once much more common, namely the bedrooms, basement, hallways, and stairways?
There is simply no better option for a bedroom than carpet, especially in a basement with a concrete floor. It covers all the bases mentioned above: noise reduction, warmth, pleasing appearance, physical comfort and safety, and air quality.
The other concrete surface in many homes is the basement in general, especially the main area and hallways. Concrete is basically never perfectly level, so installing hard flooring basically accentuates all the imperfections, assuming it’s able to even be installed. I’ve seen people put area rugs over hard flooring and even the bare concrete in basements, but something just looks and feels wrong about it – it looks and feels and looks cold and hard!! Carpeting is by far the best choice, but in a basement you need a proper underlay. Carpet should NEVER be put over concrete (or any hard flooring) without an underlay/pad!
Walking barefoot on carpet is one of its nicest benefits!
Hallways are also great for carpeting, again for all the benefits listed above. I see too many homes where the carpet in two or more bedrooms has edging against the laminate in the hallway. It’s just less hassle to install bedroom carpet and have it contiguous with the hallway carpet, then install only one edge against, say, the hard flooring in a kitchen.
What about stairs? The one main benefit of carpet on stairs is another one related to safety, namely grip. It’s way easier to slip on a hard-surface stair than a carpeted one. However, the big disadvantage of carpeted stairs is how quickly they can soil and the pile become crushed. Therefore, it’s vital to vacuum stairs at least once weekly, ideally twice per week, being one of the highest-traffic areas in a home.
Why all the “bad press” about carpet?
I can’t finish a post like this without also surmising about some reasons why carpet has been given a lot of “bad press” over the past couple of decades. Even the benefits I’ve mentioned don’t seem to matter once people set their minds upon getting hard flooring in their home. But what might be causing this rather lop-sided bias against carpet?
Part of it, I think, is misconceptions about air quality, which I address in detail in this post.
Another reason, I believe, is all these home-improvement shows. Whenever a carpet is torn out of an older home and a gorgeous hardwood floor is unearthed, the reaction of the renovators and/or the new owner(s) is as though the previous owner(s) committed some sort of cardinal sin! The reaction is like, ‘WHY would somebody have possibly covered up this beautiful hardwood???’ My reaction is like, ‘Um, for the reasons I explained above!’ Hard flooring isn’t the best solution for everyone and everything, but these folks act like carpet has no good place or function anywhere!!
How many times do you see carpet being installed on home-improvement shows? It’s almost always being torn out! Is it really that bad??
A final reason why I think carpet has lost a lot of favor in residential settings is, quite frankly, carpet cleaning companies and practices. The number one culprit, in my opinion, is the great inconvenience of the dastardly long drying times of spray extraction! How inconvenient for a customer to be told that they can’t re-occupy their carpeted living room or basement, or especially bedroom, because it will take at least half a day – most often overnight – before that carpet is totally dry! Unless one wants to endure the sound of noisy fans that will cut that dry time by only a certain amount.
Whenever a carpet is torn out of an older home and a gorgeous hardwood floor is unearthed, the reaction is as though the previous owner(s) committed some sort of cardinal sin by having covered it with carpet!
Then their carpets would look fresher for longer and they would extend their carpet life by many, many years instead of it getting damaged to the point of looking ratty within the first decade.
When I tell residential customers that they can comfortably walk on their carpet often within 2 hours of cleaning with my VLM encapsulation system (30 minutes for my commercial customers), they almost can’t believe it if their only experience has been a guy with a big van parked out front blasting a jet of water into their carpet! But when they’re able to vacuum and re-inhabit that room or area within a few hours, they need no more convincing that VLM encapsulation is the way to go in all but the most extreme cases!
VLM encapsulation is probably the most convenient form of carpet cleaning, with incredibly low drying times
My conclusion?
There’s no denying that residential carpeting has lost a lot of appeal for the reasons I just mentioned. But as with all things, we should be careful to not “Throw out the baby with the bath water.” Sure, carpeting is a foolish idea in some situations, but it’s actually a better solution in most areas where people have been ripping it out in favor of hard flooring as though it’s a scourge on humanity.
I find that most trends have a shelf life. This current one of residential hard flooring will eventually be replaced by a resurgence of people wanting carpet again – mark my words as of April 2025! This may not happen until another few years (maybe several) or even another decade or so, but as carpet technologies improve (stain resistance, for example) and carpet cleaning systems like VLM encapsulation become more known and popular, I believe that carpet has a very bright future indeed! All it will take is a trigger, likely something in popular media, to shift the trend back in favor of carpeting. Again, I believe it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when”!
Carpet truly is the better choice in most situations – and that’s coming from a guy who believed as much even before entering the carpet cleaning industry.
When I tell residential customers that they can comfortably walk on their carpet often within 2 hours of cleaning (30 minutes for my commercial customers), they almost can’t believe it!
Neat Freak Cleaning uses the industry’s top VLM system, the proper techniques, and the cleaning products designed to work best with them!
I clean carpets in Southeast Alberta, Canada.
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