Carpet or polished boards in a rental property?

Hmmm, I WILL stick to this reno budget!

I was going going to polish the boards in the living areas and carpet the bedrooms in my rental house (first time landlord!). I personally like boards myself but -

*Carpet is cheaper. I have some commercial stuff in mind. It has a 5/10 yr warranty.
*Polishing is more expensive, and I'm not sure the boards will come up that well anyway.

I'm also keeping in mind how cold it can get. My house can't be insulated in the roof and carpet would be one way of helping keep in the heat/cold. It's quite a large open lounge/dining/kitchen area.

Would it be so terrible to have carpet all the way through a rental? The agents think I should polish the boards (which can scratch too so it's not perfect either), I don't think it will necessarily be cheaper in the long run...and I've never wrecked carpets in any of the houses I rented.

Hun, its a rental. Do the cheapest option for you & save the floorboards for when you want to live there again. For now, think industrial rather than asthetics! :)

i agree with winter!! cheap carpet can be replaced, dinted floorboards cant! are the board hardwood or pine?

thats a tough one, i personally would go carpet, definately a hard wearing dark colour. Look into the cheaper of the solution dyed nylons as they are apparently stain proof to a certain degree. Polished floors look great and are easy to maintain. However they do scratch easy and i suppose that can be classed as wear and tear on a bond. Whereas a big stain on the carpet or a tear wouldn't be. Also getting floorboards sanded and polished can make for alot of cleaning..eg windows,sills, walls.
We had polished floor boards through one of our old houses and we got a burn about 30cm in diameter in it. They had to redo the whole house, they can't just sand back and polish one section to fix it.
gl

I live in a highset house in Brisbane and we have polished boards. IT IS SOOOOOO COLD. Plus im not sure where we stand when we move out now in relation to the floors as there is bound to be wear and tear having lived there for 12 months. I used to be a property manager and i think carpet is a much more cost effective way. plus the tenants have to pay to have it cleaned where as i dont think you can charge them to repolish the floors when they move out.

Definitely carpet.....the commercial stuff is much easier to clean.

Carpet. We're living in a house we decorated to be a rental - we have this sort of brown and cream and beige flecked very short loop pile carpet here. It hides dirt and stains something fantastic and was cheap - the local carpet shop called it their "rental special". Doesn't look too bad either as it matches the rest of the decor.

I have polysomething carpet at my old house which was about the same price but looked really classy when it first went in, sort of a sisal look, really nice texture. It is a generic pale beige and shows every freakin mark, and when you move furniture you can really tell where the furniture was from the change of colour on the carpet. Really regretting that one now, wishing I could rewind and put in much darker, speckly carpet.

HA! You girls rock. I was surprised to hear the agent tell me to polish the boards. It's a massive job too and moving furniture in and out does more damage to the boards.

There is a good range of colours in the 'rental range'.

There's a lot of quite nice colours in the back corner of the carpet shop where they keep the cheapies, isn't there? The marvels of modern technology.

Definitely go darker and not a plain colour though - speckles FTW!

Just watch the salespeople - they stop being quite so nice to you when they realise you want the sub $120 a metre carpet not the $250+ a metre stuff.

I'm in a rental, and everything is attracted to the carpet. :(

Do they have easy to clean rental carpet?

I would agree go carpet as you dont want boards damaged!!

Much cheaper in long run to replace carpets than re polish and or replace boards.

I would do carpet as well.

We live in a rental that has floor boards throughout and no insulation! It is colder in our house than outside. There are drafts everywhere. Yes the floorboards look lovely but carpet would be much nicer underfoot and act as an insulator.

Just get some cheap carpet (that wont show alot of stains and make sure you state in your lease agreements that carpets must be professionally steam cleaned at end of lease and receipt shown or something like that.

I agree maybe like a charcoal coloured carpet or something dark so if it does get stains you can't really notice

Definately carpet! One house I rented had polished floorboards (in Melbourne) in the study area, and the roller chairs (office chairs) mark wood very badly, the only advice I'd have would be to keep it out of the kitchen!!! (the same house had carpet in the kitchen - go figure!).

One option for high-traffic areas is carpet tiles - you can buy extra and just replace them easily ...

Dark carpet in the major areas and you're on a winner!
We have very light carpet here, and even with minor spills that have been cleaned straight away... it's stained. Worst idea EVER was the dude putting such light carpet in here.

I rented a house with polished floor boards years ago and it was a condition of my lease ( I had a three year lease) upon exiting the that entire floor would be stripped and repolished. Just food for thought.

Go for those dark carpets like they put in Docklands apartments. Easy to get cleaned and look classy.

The main contributor to your cost will be the type of tenant you get and whether they look after the place.

as someone that has been in rentals pretty much their entire life, if you go the carpet, go the darker colours with flecks lol! our landlord in the last place put in this really awful plain blue/grey colour and it showed EVERYTHING. dirt, hair, stains etc. the house NEVER looked clean. much better when you have flecks as it can last across a number of long term leases too (some stains never come out with cleaning but arent worth replacing the whole shebang iykwim). also i know from our experience that we have turned down a lease on a place because it had cream brand new carpet, there was no way that we were going to risk it considering we had a young baby and a dog and 2 cats LOL!

floorboards are really nice and attractive, but like you mentioned a bit cold and also noisy.

that said, if i was in the market to rent i would choose a house with floorboards over carpet just for my own satisfaction of being able to keep it cleaner and avoid allergy problems with my family. but seriously, the rental market here in melbs at least is so hot that there certainly would be no issue in renting it out with carpet lol!