Introduction
In the world of flooring, you can split your choices into two categories: hard floors and soft floors. Hard floors include laminate, luxury vinyl tiles, real wood and stone. On the other hand, soft flooring refers to carpet (both sheet and tiles). Choosing whether to go with soft or hard flooring for your home or workspace is a personal choice that is influenced by many factors. In this article, we will deal with the advantages that soft floors (carpets) have over their hard floor rivals, with a particular focus on the home environment.
Advantages of Carpet
• Comfort: In terms of comfort underfoot, carpets are far superior to their hard floor rivals. Where laminate, LVT and real wood floors can feel hard, cold and uninviting; carpet feels warm, soft and welcoming. Carpet is particularly useful for rooms you spend a lot of time in, such as living rooms or for rooms you want to give a luxurious feel to, such as bedrooms. Carpet also benefits families with young kids who spend a lot of time on the floor and elderly family members who will benefit from the added shock absorption carpet provides for their joints.
• Quiet: Did you know that carpet has noise reducing effects? Carpet fibres can absorb sound creating a quieter living space. This is particularly useful in house with many floors or if you are living in a flat with neighbours around you. Carpet can absorb ambient sounds (sound from the environment, such as a TV) and impact sounds (sound from footfall or something falling over).
• Safety: Carpets are safer than their hard floor counterparts because of their slip resistance. The textured surface of the carpet’s piles provides additional grip making it harder to slip over on. This is particularly useful for staircases. Also, for households with young children carpet provides extra grip when learning to walk and for households with elderly people carpet provides cushioning for accidental falls.
• Insulation: Did you know that carpets are a natural insulator? In the winter months, the carpet fibres can trap warm air retaining heat inside a room. On the other hand, in summer, carpets can retain the cool air in the room. This makes carpets an energy-efficient flooring choice that can save you money on heating bills in winter and cooling bills in summer. This will also make your house more environmentally friendly.
• Design: Carpets come in a range of designs. From solid natural colours that have a timeless appeal to bold pattern designs that capture a room’s personality. This is not necessarily a clear advantage over hard flooring, which offers lots of design choices. However, it still must be stated that carpets have a wide range of design choices available, ensuring that there will be at least one product that matches your style requirements.
• Affordability: This will depend on a few factors, but for the most part carpets will be cheaper (per square metre) than real wood floors for example. Also, a budget-friendly carpet will come in cheaper than a high-end luxury vinyl tile for example. Feel free to browse Flooring Hut’s wide range of carpets to ensure you find the best carpet to fit your budget.
Conclusion
Carpet (soft flooring) has a series of advantages over hard flooring, such as LVT, laminate, real wood and stone flooring. These advantages include comfort, quiet, safety, insulation, design and affordability. The main disadvantage that carpet suffers from is air quality. It is easy for dust, allergens and other undesirable airborne particles to become trapped in a carpet’s fibres keeping them in the room for longer. With regular vacuuming and cleaning the problem can be controlled. Overall, if you decide to choose to carpet your home’s floors then you will have made a great decision allowing you to enjoy many benefits!
