I raised 3 joeys and 2 cats on a Cavalier Bremworth pure wool carpet and never regretted it for one minute except for one colour choice. The living areas were in a deep brown which I would never recommend - as portpiro said, dark colours show every speck of fluff, dust, pet hair and anything else that comes into the house. The bedroom areas were an Arctic White and were so easy to keep clean - regular vacuuming and a deep clean annually or occasionally spot cleaning of any accidents. I had 40 years of wear from these carpets - probably won't get anything like that these days though. http://www.cavbrem.com.au/tools/products.aspx I think if you choose mid brown/grey colours in a tweed or a self pattern, you will find this does hide any stubborn marks, but with wool, I just didn't have any. I note now this firm has brought out a range of very nice looking carpet tiles. If these are easy to interchange, they could be very useful in bedrooms especially where only a small area of flooring gets wear while under beds and furniture stays pristine. I also found when replacing my carpet recently that nylons and synthetics were not necessarily that much cheaper than wool but although they are more stain proof, they do build up static electricity that will attract dirt and make the carpet much harder to clean. This is one carpet from their Turkestan range that I really liked for durability

We have timber stairs though downstairs is retail. Being clumsy I've had to put in anti slip aluminium strips on mine . Hubby reckons they look ugly but I do not want to slip all the way down the stairs. have done it on our steps before and stuffed up my ankle. I would carpet it unless you've got lots of room for a big staircase . A narrow one in timber is very dangerous.

Hi, I am looking to install carpets in the bedrooms for my home and I am just wondering if I could get advise on carpet brands that are good for reducing allergies? I am from Perth, Western Australia. Also, in your opinion is carpet or laminate flooring better for bedrooms? Thanks in advance for all your help :)

As a former renter, this was the exact property I would usually rent. Good functional condition, not my style but who cares? I never even inspected the all white and engineered benchtop places as a few visits usually revealed the renovations to be somewhat shabby, the places to be incredibly small and not good value for money at all. I always rented outdated properties as I typically got more space and better terms than places where landlords were desperately trying to recoup renovation costs. You're going to demolish the place so why spend any money on it? Changing out the flooring and even painting the cupboards and swapping out appliances will cost you thousands to get done and then what? Are you really going to reap x2 x3 times that expense in one years rent? I doubt it. First of all, I would have the place appraised for rental return in it's current state. And then appraised for rental return if it were tweaked. You will most likely find that any renovation will take years to recover the costs and actually make anymore than renting it out as is. For reference I was a long term tenant in all the places I rented, no I didn't leave rubbish around anywhere or have burnt out cars in my driveway. I left each property scrupulously clean, even having the existing curtains or blinds professionally cleaned and carpets professionally cleaned on exit. I just preferred value for money in rentals because I was saving to own my own home. Good tenants don't necessarily need renovated places to rent. Tenants are always constrained by their income, they can't afford to spend over 30% of it on rent alone no matter how nice. We have lives to live too.