Wooden Floors

dorsetpennt It might be worth you checking your lease. Some do specify that there must be carpets in upper flats. I think it would be mainly fairly recently builds from when wooden/laminate floors became popular. We had a client who withdrew from his proposed purchase of a new build because the Lease specified that the floors had to be carpeted.

Bez, know what you mean about carpets in France. All the bedrooms in our house in France are carpeted and we bought all the carpet in England and took it over to France on the car.

I think it depends on your house as to which looks best. In England we live in an 500 year old house and bare floor boards, with lots of rugs seems to look best. Our previous house, built at the start of the 20th century was fully carpeted and if I suddenly found myself back there I wold still have it fully carpeted.

I have a laminated hall floor -I did this after the fire because we have a weird shaped carpet. In the past when we put down carpets it had to be done in three pieces, this meant that in time the pieces would get picked up by people, cats etc. So I decided to laminate the floor but have carpets in the sitting room and bedrooms. Carpets, especially in the bedroom, is far cosier. I was bought up in Canada and have lived with wooden floors before. However, we always had rugs - which they don't upstairs.
Reddevil3 nice idea but I think I'll suffer in silence. When the previous tenents moved in they used to run their washing machine at night [after 10pm] As my bedroom is under their kitchen I nicely asked if they could please not do this and was greeted with such a nasty reply I kept away from them. This couple are so nice and very aware of other noise like the washing machine etc I'd rather not tackle them. It's is only noisy when their DD and GD visits.

I like the idea of wooden floors , however, when we had our place re-carpeted , we had to lift the carpets ready for the fitters , so it was all bare boards and boy, were they noisy , the sound of us walking was echoing all round the place .

So for me it is a no .

I am a carpet lover too Galen and we had them almost everywhere in the last house. Would not be practical to do that here but I am starting to think about having them put upstairs in the bedrooms. It is not so easy to find carpets here in France - or at least not in this neck of the woods. Those which I have seen are nothing like the quality of the ones we had in UK neither is there the choice.

dorsetpennt; this happened with the S.O's flat. It's on the ground floor and the people above had the carpets taken out, and he can now hear people moving around. He didn't say anything, though, until they complained about some noise from his flat [a baby crying or something] and he then pointed out that he could hear them moving around all the time . Which shut them up very quickly!

Hate them! I have carpets throughout!

Why don't you invite them down for coffee, make sure the conversation gets round to wooden floors. say you are thinking of putting them down but say you are concerned that if you had visitors wearing hard shoes, that the noise may be transferred upwards (it can do). Say you are even thinking of providing visitors with slippers!
If they are nice, considerate people, it might make them think about their own noise?

Our house has wooden floors downstairs with very large rugs/ smallish carpets - much like houses used to be in UK when I was a child except that we have not stained round the edges! Up stairs we put laminate only because it is not subject to little things nibbling it - and there are a few of them in this part of the world. I do not really like the laminate as I find it cold to walk on and not only that the fluff under the bed manages to move around when I am trying to sweep/mop it up! I do have some rugs up there but am thinking of putting down bigger ones now. Laminate is noisier than wood I think. We increased the insulation on the downstairs ceilings this year and that has cut down a lot on noise from above - don't always hear DH moving about getting up so I can have the kettle on!!

Not sure why I put laminate wood floors (wishful thinking maybe) I meant laminate floors..

We have laminate wood floors, cheap and cheerful but all we could afford and I love it , easy to clean as I have it all through downstairs a quick sweep/hoover and wash with a mop and bucket they come up like new and they have been down 7/8 yrs . I just have a mat inside the outside doors and a rug in front of the fireplace. They haven't even scratched apart from my sons old bedroom where I have a couple of dents where he dropped his weights , happily he now lives elsewhere and that room is now my spare/computer/reading room... wooden/laminate floors I love em!

We have wooden floors, it is an old house and if we took them up the downstairs rooms would lack a ceiling.

However, I do find the look of bare wooden floors with no rugs is very cold (psychologically, if not actually) they echo and are very uncomfortable so mine are liberally scattered with rugs, with old fashioned underfelt under all but the smallest.

It gives me the best of both worlds, the look of wood but all the sound suppression and comfort of carpet.

My neighbour was told, when putting his house on the market, that the trend is reversing and that carpets are desirable now.
My slippers even make a lot of noise on DD's wooden floors, it irritates me no end. I shall stick with carpets whatever the trend, and at least the cats' hairs don't waft everywhere as they would with solid floors.