Lower your carbon footprint, beautify your home, add resale value to your property, and keep allergens to a minimum all in one swoop by opting for hardwood floors over carpet. Here are some pro tips to help you compare and contrast carpet to wood flooring.
Carpet will always have its place in the flooring industry. It’s cozy on the feet and is a sensible, relatively low cost flooring option for choice sections of many family’s homes. In fact, over 50% of material sold in the floor covering industry is carpet. People like cushy floors!
Despite the draw of comfort, carpet has some ugly downsides worth consideration before you commit to any shaggy flooring choices.
As experts with years of experience in the flooring industry, here at Denver Dustless we have the ‘dirt’ on carpeting.
Wood Floors are Cleaner than Carpet
Carpet is simply not made to endure the normal facts of life in a family household (including but certainly not limited to kid’s accidents, pet messes, wine spills, muddy boots ‘someone’ forgot to take off, etc.).
Just to keep the surface of a carpet clean requires a religious vacuuming routine, and that doesn’t even cover the substances you can’t see that seep deep down into the padding.
This is gross:
Once debris and allergen particles in the air have been absorbed into your carpet, they are extremely difficult to remove, not to mention unhealthy! Allergens trapped in your carpet can aggravate asthma and lower the overall air quality of your home. Who knew carpet could be unhealthy?
Hiring someone to professionally clean your carpet can’t guarantee the complete removal of stains.
What about hardwood flooring? A sanitary and clean environment in your home is far easier to attain with hardwood than with carpet. Dust and debris are easily seen on hardwood. It has nowhere to seep; nowhere to hide!
Since all you need is a simple broom and mop, hardwood flooring is one of the easiest flooring options to keep clean. Forget the vacuum and cupboard full of harsh carpet stain removers!
Hardwood Flooring is Eco-Friendly – Carpet Isn’t!
Here at Denver Dustless, we are devoted to responsibly sourced wood for all of our flooring. We source our supplies from sustainable, bio-degradable, natural materials. Trees used to make our wood floors come from areas that can be replanted to produce environmentally friendly wood floors for generations to come.
Get this:
Studies have shown that 2% of the waste in landfills is carpet.
Carpet is typically made of 100% synthetic vinyl material. That means carpet cannot be recycled. Once it’s used and stained up, it’s simply tossed into a landfill. On the market, there are now carpeting options that are less environmentally harmful than their synthetic predecessors, but as you can imagine, that comes at an added cost.
Chemicals used in carpet cleaning products are also typically not environmentally (or family!) friendly.
Carpet is Less Durable than Hardwood
Carpet is ultra-quick to show wear and tear, especially in high-traffic areas, such as entryways and hallways. Once you have a big stain or rip in the middle of your carpet, it is essentially ‘toast’.
No matter how hard you try, carpet will never look as good as the day you had it laid. There’s no way to stop the inevitable fading, stains, wrinkles, and rips over time. It takes more work and more money to maintain carpet than hardwood. If you plan replacing your flooring again within 7-15 years, carpet is your best bet.
When taken care of, hardwood flooring can endure on into the next century. Durability is in its name! Hard wood floors will keep their ‘brand new’ look for years, and each time they are refinished, the ‘brand new’ shine will come right back. Wood flooring only grows in beauty and character over time.
Wood Flooring is Timeless – Carpet Gets Outdated
Carpet style and color trends come and go with the seasons. Remember that hideous, obnoxiously orange, shag rug your parents got in the 70s….and still have? Case in point.
When choosing a carpet design, you are locking yourself into a decade (or more) of one aesthetic in your house. The pressure is on!
On the other hand, hardwood flooring is considered one of the most classic and timeless flooring options on the market. It’s going to look good now, and 100 years from now. The pressure is off.
Wood Flooring is a Better Investment than Carpet
(The resale value of wood is ridiculously high while carpet has next to no resale value.)
Hardwood flooring adds massive resale value to your home. In fact, The National Association of Realtors reported that 21% of realtors recommend homeowners to install wood flooring before putting their home on the market. The same report estimated that laying hardwood floor in your home has an average return of 91% of your investment. With carpet, even a new installation has little effect on raising the overall resale value of your home, not to mention the fact that old carpet actually decreases the value.
Yes, initial costs of carpet installation are significantly lower, making it a tempting flooring solution for many homeowners. Still, when you add up the total cost of regular maintenance and then completely replacing your carpet every decade or two, buying carpet shapes up to be a not-so-worthy investment.
Denver Dustless is ready to install your new hardwood floors. Get in touch, and we’ll get you an estimate for your next hardwood flooring project.