Your 5-Step Guide to Preparing for Buying and Installing New Carpet or Vinyl Flooring
Choosing new carpets or vinyl flooring can be a great way to spruce up your home without having to go to the financially extreme lengths of, say, coughing up for a new kitchen or bathroom.
But whether you’re renovating or simply replacing your old carpet, you can save plenty of time and energy by going about things the right way.
A little bit of planning, says Harrisons Carpet product manager Mike Dean, can help create a seamless process from the moment you first decide to call Harrisons, through our free in-home consultation, to the expert installation.
Step 1: What goes where?
This is one of the most basic choices and you can usually come to a decision simply by visiting our website and weighing up the pros and cons of carpet or vinyl in the areas you want to renovate. Your first choice, obviously, is what room or rooms you are working on. And then there are clear benefits for vinyl in areas such as bathrooms, kitchens, commercial areas such as shops, or areas where there’s likely to be high levels of dampness, spillages or dirt – and there are clear benefits for carpets in terms of look, feel and texture and comfort in most domestic rooms.
Step 2: Choose your colour
This might seem counter-intuitive, but Mike says that because there is such a wide range of options for fibres and styles of carpet but a relatively narrow range of colours it makes sense to choose the colour of your flooring first so you can then match paints and other textiles in the room to the carpet.
“If possible, those who are going to renovate should choose carpets before they choose paint colours because you can get paint tinted to anything you want – whereas with carpets, most ranges have about 12 colours and getting the right match if you have already chosen a paint colour may be more difficult. It’s a better idea to choose carpet and then have a look at what colours go with that.”
Harrisons has worked with in-house expert interior designer Anita Shirley to create a series of mood boards to help you colour-match your carpet with the rest of your room and the free design expertise provided with every in-home consultation also includes matching the carpet colours with the Resine range of paints.
Step 3: Choose your budget
Although Mike says people are sometimes pleasantly surprised at the cost of recarpeting their home it can still be hard to calculate your budget for individual rooms or a whole home renovation, but before you even call us for a consultation, you can still get a good idea of the sort of costs involved by following our guide to calculating the cost of carpet and vinyl and explanations of terms such as “broadloom metres”.
Step 4: Decide what style of flooring you want or need
The two basic considerations to choosing your flooring is performance and comfort – and it’s important to realise that the two factors do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. Mike says once you’ve decided how busy the area you want carpeted is going to be and what level of luxury you want, then it’s a matter of balancing that with your budget.
“The questions you ask are ‘do I want luxury, and if so do I want a luxurious carpet that is going to perform a long time or do I understand that what I can afford might not perform as long as a better product’? That’s why you’re looking at the difference between solution dyed nylon or wool or Triexta that will perform over time but you’ll pay more for it, or you run to polypropylene and polyester that gives a luxury feel at a lower price but you’re not necessarily going to get the same performance over the longterm.”
Step 5: Give us a call
The beauty of a free in-home consultation is that you can weigh up all of these factors alongside an expert who can give you advice about colours, textures, fabrics, measurements and costings – all without any pressure to buy and at a time that suits you and your family.
For more information or to book your fee measure and price, call us on 0800 421001, or fill out the booking form online.
