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!

From a renter's point of view, I was going to say floor boards, but after reading the other responses I agree, go with the carpet.

The only reason I was going to say floor boards is because all of the rentals I've been in have had cheap carpet in a light carpet, and let me tell you it's very, very hard to keep clean not bein stain resistant and also a light colour.

So go for the carpet but definitely in a dark colour!

as lovely as floor boards are, i'd be nervous having them when renting because they're the sort of thing that could potentially cause dispute at the end of a lease...we have some floor board type of thing (sorry, not well versed in flooring! :lol:) & i'm already thinking that when we move out, how do we agree what is normal wear & tear etc. carpet is easier.

Well, we are renting at the moment and we have carpet in the house.... and it's disgusting. I think it *used to be* beige... but not quite sure now :sick:. Apparently the carpet was just put in about a year before me moved in - but by the time we moved in it was all dirty and yucky and worn out :rolleyes:. The landlord even got it steam cleaned for us but that was still not enough... the stains stayed. So you *might* be lucky to get people in that look after the carpet, or you might get PIGS that ruin it within the first year. Then you have to replace the carpet throughout the house. Worth thinking about. When we were still renting in germany, all the flats had laminate flooring thoughout (I think in Australia they call it floating floors??) and that was THE BEST!! It was easy to keep clean, NEVER scatched (and I lived with two rowdy boys, a dog and a cat) and was not actually that cold, because they put insulation under the boards (for noise reduction and to keep warmth in).

Like I said, if you have 'clean' people living in your house, carpet shouldn't be a problem, but you never know...

Sorry, didn't mean to confuse you further! Hope you'll now what to do soon :hug:

Floor boards gets scratched so easily, if they have children who are playful (or even adults who arnt careful) then jumping onto a lounge the wrong way can make the lounge slide and cause scratches to the boards and thats just an everyday example, not to mention the damage that can be caused when moving in. If they havent had boards before they may bot relise to put a mat etc under the furniture before sliding leaving marks and scratches. They also dont have the give that carpet does, so unless the floor is 100% level furniture can wobble when walked past, again walking on its own = hello scratches. Unless you have a double brick home, really good insulation or only a small area wood then I would carpet it otherwise heat becomes a factor. Either now or later you would need good qulality window dressings to help with the heat factor if you go wood and dont have the insulation to keep the warmth too. Also wood doesnt have the same grip that carpet does so little ones are more prone to slip over on it, bowls smash when dropped etc, all potentially damaging to your home. Carpet is more allergenic, but it is only a rental so will you really be worrying about their allergies? lol. Just some more food for thought :lol:

Floating floor boards are something to think about. DH insists that if we ever build a house we will have bamboo floors. Don't stain or scratch.
Carpet in the bedrooms though.

We have slate & carpet here. Honestly, the first question I asked when offered this house was the colour & condition of the carpet. It is light, I don't like that, but old. The owners were considering replacing it & I asked them not too. We've already said if we ever bought the place, both walls & floors would be darker colours.

I do love my slate floors though. They are freezing cold, but are so easy to keep clean (or they look clean anyway).

We try to clean our carpets every 6 to 12 months anyway, no matter how long we live in a place. We hate it being dirty (if I owned the vax it'd be done more often!) I'm sure you could make it a condition of the lease to have a long term tennant clean them every 12 months & they are to be cleaned on moving out anyway.

I can't wait to get mum's vax into action this weekend! Carpets, lounges & matresses here we come, lol!

Depends on the rental market for the house. If most other rentals in that area and price range are polished floors then go for that as that's what the market expects. I personally would be very dubious about renting a house with carpets in the living areas - been there, done that, not happy. But yep, if you do, go dark. As a former landlady, scratches and dints on boards are so not a big deal to me - just normal wear and tear.

Definitely go carpet in bedrooms.

hmm yeah the floating floors are also an option. and one that as we were doing the rental rounds was increasingly prevalent. i guess if they are stain and scratch resistant it could be a good long term investment?

Yes, it's worth thinking about.

We had polished floor boards in an old house that we lived once, but it's no comparison to floating floors. The "real" wood floors always scratched, dented, splintered and what not. The laminate (floating) flooring was soooo much better (it seems to be "harder" than normal wooden floors). My mum recently put laminate flooring in - she used the kind that had tiny, tiny little grooves in it (grooves where basically invisible, but it stopped you from slipping!) Really clever! My dog much prefered those to the normal ones :lol:.

Good luck with your choice, hun!