Tiles or Carpets?

N

neoprema

Honorary Master
Joined
Jan 12, 2016
Messages
19,405
Reaction score
18,412
Aside from personal preference, anyone know from experience when it comes to other factors such as labor, additional consumables etc - which is cheaper to replace if you have carpets already?

Remove carpets, replace with carpets
or
Remove carpets, replace with tiles

Thanks.
 
Biggest cost contributor is the material..

You get cheap tiles and expensive tiles and cheap carpets and expensive carpets.. some tiles can go up to 1k per sqm or more in some cases and you can get some tiles for as cheap as 80-100 per sqm.. same goes for the carpets pretty much..

For carpets you have tack strips, underlay and glue as installation materials and for tiles it's your cement and grout and tile spacers.. these two would be a like for like costing, give or take, so I won't be too concerned about either of these pushing up the cost..

Then labour, well, 70 per sqm for tiling is the cheapest I have seen so far, carpet I have gotten a price at 220 per sqm for installation.. another one of those that can vary greatly, but especially in terms of tiling, you get what you pay for and you have to look at previous work of the tiler..
 
To add to the above, if you have ever removed permanently installed carpets, you would never put down carpets ever again.. you can vacuum carpets weekly, but you will still have dust get through.. stains and spills and the like can only ever be cleaned at the very surface level, never lower down..

It is truly a disgusting sight to behold..
 
If given a choice, I would never ever put down carpets ever again - they are a long-term pain to keep clean, stain-free and looking like something UNLESS you go for the top-of-the-range which keeps its look and appearance for longer.

Tiles are much easier to maintain and keep clean. But, there are always the dangers of breakages and chips. The only way to deal with that aspect is again to go for expensive tiles that are very very well laid by a tiler who knows what he is doing. The typical tiles sold for residential applications are pretty much junk. The better choice would be for commercial high-traffic grades.
 
The other side of the coin is of course, how often you are prepared to replace/change both. Some people like to keep up with the fashions and then it does not matter if you choose the cheaper lower quality stuff. And, don't forget that the average bond life on a property is about 7-10 years, which means that you should also factor in how long you are going to occupy a particular property. New owners tend to tear up and replace everything anyway.
 
Carpets have cheaper labour installation costs and takes less time to install.
 
a colleague had a geyser burst not that long ago and wanted to replace the damaged carpets with tiles, insurance refused

that right there tells you tiles are more expensive than carpets in general

cost aside, just personal preference:
- tiles in every room where you don't specifically want/need any type of "cosy" look
- laminate wood in all the other rooms
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
a colleague had a geyser burst not that long ago and wanted to replace the damaged carpets with tiles, insurance refused

that right there tells you tiles are more expensive than carpets in general

cost aside, just personal preference:
- tiles in every room where you don't specifically want/need any type of "cosy" look
- laminate wood in all the other rooms
Click to expand...
Yup, that is an option. And a middle path between easy to keep clean and cozy at the same time. The issue is the same, however. Laminated floors are also quite pricy AND are very dependent on proper installation, otherwise, water penetration between the boards will make them swell and look terrible very very quickly.
 
Geoff.D said:
Yup, that is an option. And a middle path between easy to keep clean and cozy at the same time. The issue is the same, however. Laminated floors are also quite pricy AND are very dependent on proper installation, otherwise, water penetration between the boards will make them swell and look terrible very very quickly.
Click to expand...
indeed, for proper cozy style I wanted solid wood floors years ago

then I saw the prices and went laminate for life :eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X