Carpet:

[Jazzy]

Carpet: If it gets soaked/stays wet it's ruined, it's hard to keep clean compared to some hard floors, and an area rug can be easily changed out.

So why did wall to wall carpet ever become a popular option in consumer homes?

 

[Lamb]

Carpets can dry out if you have a dehumidifier or in very dry weather. It's why I don't shampoo our carpets until the fall when it's drier outside than the humidity of summer.

I hate carpets. And yet, we have carpeting in the house we bought 8 years ago and never got rid of it. It's expensive to switch to hard wood and the reason wall to wall became popular is because it's cheaper than hard wood as well as keeping your feet warm in the winter.

I prefer hard wood flooring! If we become rich, which won't happen, we'll have hard woods installed everywhere. We do have hard wood flooring in parts of the home, but it's faded from the builder grade windows that were installed. I hate those too.

 

[Josiah]

Our house has wood floors. I hate them.

They are hard and cold and lead to noisy environments. I miss carpet.... it gives everything a much warmer feeling, it's soft and comfortable, it cuts down on noise, little boys can fall on it and not get hurt. I hope to someday get rid of the wood floors - at least mostly.



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[tango]

Carpet: If it gets soaked/stays wet it's ruined, it's hard to keep clean compared to some hard floors, and an area rug can be easily changed out.

So why did wall to wall carpet ever become a popular option in consumer homes?

Getting soaked isn't usually a huge concern because it doesn't happen very often. I've owned houses with carpets in them for nearly 25 years and have never once soaked a carpet.

Large rugs make more sense in so many ways because they give the benefits of carpet while also being much easier to swap out if your tastes change or you do manage to ruin it. In years gone by it was common in at least some areas to have a large square of carpet placed in the middle of a room, with the space around the carpet painted. When you moved house you'd take the carpets with you.

Chances are some genius decided it was a status symbol to have fitted carpets so everybody started doing it to keep up with the Joneses.