Flooring ideas, room by room

Bedrooms are where carpet earns its place: warm underfoot first thing in the morning, and quieter than a hard floor. Light matters as much as colour. Full-height windows and sheer curtains throw low light along the floor, and in a calm, lightly furnished room that light shows every join and every edge, so the way the carpet is fitted matters as much as the carpet itself.

Pale neutrals keep a bedroom calm, and a loop or a heathered colour adds texture without adding pattern. Our mobile showroom brings the samples to your home, so you can see them in your bedroom’s own light.

Living rooms carry the most furniture and the most everyday traffic in a home. In an open-plan home, one floor through the living area, dining and kitchen makes the rooms read as one space, which is why the Preston and Thornbury homes on this page each have a single plank floor from room to room. Wide boards suit a large room, and a pale, natural tone makes the most of the light from big windows.

If you’d rather have carpet in a living room or a home study, a textured loop or a heathered colour brings warmth without looking busy.

The hallway is the first floor you see and the busiest walkway in the house. Boards laid lengthways down a hall lead the eye to the far end. In Port Melbourne the planks run to the arched front door and brighten a long, narrow hall; in Thornbury they run down a panelled hallway and on into the kitchen.

Herringbone gives an entry a tailored look without changing colour, as in Preston. It takes more cutting and more time than straight planks, so herringbone installation is quoted at the free measure. If you’re carpeting a hallway, we do our best to keep joins out of the walkway.

We don’t lay carpet in kitchens, laundries or bathrooms. For a kitchen we suggest water-resistant hybrid or vinyl plank, or engineered oak if spills are wiped up promptly and there’s a mat at the sink.

Running the same floor from the kitchen into the dining and living areas makes an open-plan home feel bigger. In Thornbury, one honey-toned plank floor runs from the front hall right through the kitchen and dining area, and the boards’ natural colour variation sits well with the white walls and the dark blue island.

Stairs are where carpet work shows the most. Every nosing has to be tight and square, every winder step is a different shape, and on an open balustrade the edges of the carpet are on show from top to bottom.

On the staircase below, each step is carpeted on its own and the edges are overlocked (bound), so they finish cleanly against the black metal balusters. Charcoal hides marks on a busy staircase. Every staircase is different, so stairs are measured and quoted on site.

In a shop, hotel or school the floor has to be right on the day the doors open, and it usually goes in around trading hours or guests. A quiet, even floor lets the products, the lighting or the room do the work, and a mid-grey or charcoal hides marks where traffic is heavy.

At a Melbourne CBD apartment hotel we’ve replaced the carpet in stages since 2021, on dates agreed with the building manager, and the same mid-grey runs through every suite.