Hard surfaces are slippery and can easily lead to a fall.
Carpet versus hardwood on stairs.
Safety should always come first an as unbelievable as it may sound a carpet will not prevent you from slipping and falling down the stairs.
When it comes to safety.
The alternative is real hardwoods for our main floor and stairs both up and down and throughout the hallway.
Having carpet on the stairs doesn t necessarily prevent falls but it helps to provide traction compared to hardwood.
I was barefoot having just taken off my slippers that merit their name.
Beautiful hardwood stairs will be ruined by the addition of carpeting because the tack strips need to be nailed down creating holes in the wood.
Besides most homeowners with nice wooden stairs wouldn t be considering carpeting in the first place would they.
Where carpeted stairs really excel is in houses that have noisy stairs.
Slippery carpet stairs are however not as dangerous as hardwood floors since they provide a soft landing thus the fall will hurt a little less.
Hardwood or carpet on stairs.
Which is right for me.
The adage better safe than sorry definitely applies to stairs.
Hardwood is a good because high traffic throughways would benefit from a durable low maintenance flooring.
I m even more of a detractor now that it has caused me to fall three times on the stairs with the most recent incident on monday drawing some blood i m not an especially clumsy person.
Carpeted stairs will obviously accumulate more dust and dirt.
Cleaning and maintenance of hardwood flooring and carpet.
Carpet on the other hand would muffle those high traffic sounds and make for a safer stairway.
If you do have hardwood stairs you may want to consider a runner to increase safety.
This noise may be a result of children once young kids learn all about the staircase they will use them relentlessly.
Installing hardwood floors can cost between 9 and 12 per square foot compared with about 3 to 5 per square foot for carpet so some homeowners opt to install hardwood floors only in some.
A staircase rug is also soft to the feet.
In addition should a fall ever occur carpet offers a much softer landing spot than wood flooring which could help reduce the likelihood of injury.