Some homes from a particular era in time come with carpet throughout most of the home, while others are entirely wood, or sometimes tile. If you happen to love the coziness of a carpeted bedroom, but can’t decide on one, don’t stress. We will answer the age old question of: to match, or not to match.
There are many ways to achieve the feeling and look you want, while keeping the budget low, and a sense of continuity throughout the house. The short answer is: yes it can be great to match, but it isn’t strictly necessary.
It does also depend on whether you are planning on installing carpet, or using area rugs. Different areas of the home have different carpeting needs. While you can create a unified look and easily tie all of the rooms together using a matching carpet, it’s not necessary.
If the landing is a high traffic area and requires more durable carpeting or deserves to be its own focal point with unique flooring, feel free to use a coordinated, yet different type of carpet from that in the bedrooms.
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Benefits to Having the Same Carpet Through the Entire House
1. Continuity Throughout the House
With home design, it is vital to create continuity, and a sense of flow between rooms. While it can be a lot of fun to play with carpets, it can also be tricky, and make things feel a little hodgepodge.
Keeping the carpets consistent will allow the spaces to flow visually: literally, it creates a visual flow, as there is no line between two different carpets creating that separation.
2. Simplicity
If you’re someone who values simplicity in your space, and in the design process, then choosing the same carpets throughout your home is the way to go. It will take the decision making out of it, or rather just reduce the amount of it you need to do.
Instead of having to choose How each carpet will go with the other, and the materials and colours of each one, you will only need to make the decision once. Usually, as well, this decision is geared towards something neutral that will work across the entire space. Therefore, the decision is fairly straightforward to make.
3. It Can be More Cost Effective
It can be more cost effective for installation to choose one carpet that will be installed across the entire house. Choosing different carpets for each room will cost more for the carpet itself, and will probably cost more for labour.
If price is an important factor, and you are set on having carpet through a certain portion of your home, going with one continuous carpet will make the most sense for you.
This also gives you the opportunity to choose something that is more standard, and make changes to things that are cheaper to change over time.
4. Flexibility to Play with the Other Features
If you like to play with wallpaper, paint colours, bold furniture, and lighting, then going with a fairly neutral carpet across the house will be a great way to have a baseline, allowing you room to play.
Having a bold or distinct carpet could limit your ability to go big with lighting, or lush fabrics on your furniture. Therefore, choosing a continuous, and perhaps fairly neutral carpet, will really open up your ability to play around with these other features and have fun with it.
While carpeted homes are less common in cities, and more common amongst homes in the suburbs, there are some real reasons why it can be of benefit. Namely, it can really help to insulate the space in the winter.
If you live in a northern climate, where it gets cold in the winter months, then it may be a great idea to have fully carpeted rooms. It will be warmer, help to insulate the house and save on heating.
It also just creates a cozy atmosphere, makes it more comfortable to walk around without socks or slippers on, and may even soften the fall of little ones.
Downsides to Having Carpet Through the Entire House
1. You Lose Flexibility & Adaptability
Choosing one carpet for the entire house can mean that you lose the flexibility to place area rugs where you want, making changes over time without paying to rip out carpet and reinstall it.
It can make it more difficult to feel that you can adapt the rooms to your liking without paying and taking the time to renovate. Making home improvements or trying to change the color of your furniture or wall paint can end up being affected by the fact that you have a specific color carpet throughout your house.
2. You Lose Ability to Distinguish Rooms From one Another
If you choose to install the same carpet throughout your home, you lose the ability to create distinguishing and distinct room atmospheres.
If you want to go full on and create a colour coded room, or give your kid that pink and orange room of their dreams, opting for one single carpet colour may not be right for you.
A benefit of choosing different carpets, whether that be colour or texture, is that you can craft a particular vision for each room, and really do it justice. You can match the furniture, paint colours, and lighting to the carpet. This can be a lot of fun, and a chance to let your creativity run free.
3. It Can be Boring
While some people love the calming nature of continuous carpet throughout their space, some may find it boring. It can give off the feeling of a cookie cutter home that isn’t really lived in. This, however, does really depend on the home itself.
If you have an old home with a lot of original character, you may not have to worry about this. If, however, your home is a new build, or built as part of a suburbs post 1980’s, then you may run this risk.
Choosing to customize rooms may help you in creating some flair and a sense of creativity and vibrancy.
Alternatives to Having Carpet Through the Entire House
1. Choosing Different Carpet for Types of Rooms
One lovely way to go against the matching carpet look is to choose different carpets for categories of rooms: for example, the kids rooms are all the same colour, while the master is a different colour.
In many homes, the stairs are set up as a focal point. In others, stairs open up onto a beautiful landing. A landing that may deserve its own attention. If you want to draw all eyes to a particular place in your design, you should select a unique carpet.
Pick something that isn’t already in use anywhere else in the house. That one of a kind floor will embellish the fact that this place is special. It can be a pain to pick out unique carpets for multiple rooms when one carpet would work for them all.
The needs between bedrooms generally don’t vary, so one carpet would be fine. On the other hand, sometimes the needs between bedrooms do vary. In these cases, it’s perfectly acceptable to coordinate flooring instead of matching.
For a child’s room, you may want something more stain-resistant. A bedroom with an attached bathroom (and shower) may benefit from something else.
2. Choosing Wood, and accenting with an Area Rug
Personally, I prefer this method, because it feels the most flexible and allows you to play with really beautiful patterned rugs, without overwhelming the space.
Especially if your home has existing hardwood floors, it’s really great to just accentuate this beautiful natural feature, and use rugs to create that sense of coziness. Entirely covering up hardwood floors is a real shame.
Depending on the age of your home, there may actually be wood floors that are covered up by carpet, this is not uncommon in older homes that have been renovated between the 1980’s and 2000’s.
3. Pairing Varying Neutrals
Coordinated floors offer the homeowner a lot more freedom. In this style, it’s important to unify all of the flooring materials. This is done by finding and repeating similar elements. However, similar is nowhere near as strict as matching.
For example, you might choose tile for the kitchen floor. This tile could be a similar color to the carpet in the living room. The color is the same, but the material is not. The similar color offers consistency and unity between both floors, but you can pick different materials that suit each room.
In the laundry room, you might select tile as well. But, this tile is a few shades lighter than the tile in the kitchen. The color has changed. This lighter color is a better choice for the smaller room, but now the material is the same between both rooms.
In this method, think of the floors as being more like cousins than twins. However, one consideration is to switch between flooring materials at logical and natural breaking points in the home. For example, switch to your new floor at a door frame, rather than at the middle of a room.
When it comes down to it, if you choose high quality materials, and create a space that has continuity and creativity, you can’t go wrong.
If you are on a tight budget, leaving the floors as they are, whether that be carpeted, tiled, or wood, and just focusing on the walls, and furniture can be totally sufficient to update your space and get it feeling the way you want it.
The reality is, it can work really well to have continuous carpeting throughout certain parts of the home, with the exception of the kitchen and bathrooms. At the same time, there are plenty of alternatives if that doesn’t feel right for you!
