Carpet vs Timber Flooring in Bedrooms: Which Is Better?

For most bedrooms, timber is the better long-term choice particularly with a rug beside the bed. It is easier to keep clean, lasts longer and ties the bedrooms to the rest of the house. Carpet has the advantage for warmth underfoot and for keeping noise down, especially upstairs. The deciding questions are usually who sleeps below the room, how cold the floor gets in winter, and how much you like the feel of carpet first thing in the morning.

Warmth in a Melbourne winter

This is where carpet has a real advantage. A carpeted floor feels warm to bare feet, and a hard floor feels cool, even when both are at the same temperature. On a July morning in a house without underfloor heating, the difference is noticeable.

How cold a timber bedroom feels depends a lot on what’s under it. A bedroom on a concrete slab feels cooler than one upstairs over a heated living area. An older house on stumps can be draughty through gaps in the floor and around vents, and a new floor over well-prepared old boards often feels less draughty than the tired carpet it replaced, because the gaps get closed off.

The usual answer is a rug. A large rug that runs under the bed and out either side gives you something warm to step onto, and leaves the rest of the floor easy to clean. Slippers do the rest.

Dust, allergies and cleaning

As flooring specialists rather than medical professionals, we aren’t in a position to make health claims. If someone in your house has asthma or allergies, ask your GP or specialist what they recommend. What we can describe is how the two floors behave.

Carpet holds dust, hair and whatever gets tracked in, down in the pile where you can’t see it. Vacuuming lifts some of it. A hard floor doesn’t hold much at all. Dust sits on the surface where you can see it, and a vacuum with a hard-floor head or a damp mop removes it. Some people find that reassuring, while others would rather not see the dust.

Rugs on a timber floor sit somewhere in between. You can take them outside, wash the smaller ones, or replace them far more cheaply than a whole room of carpet.

Noise, especially upstairs

If the bedroom is upstairs, think about who is underneath. Footsteps on a timber floor carry to the room below more than footsteps on carpet do. In a two-storey house, that might be the living room where someone is watching TV while a teenager walks around upstairs at midnight.

A few things reduce it: a suitable underlay under a floating floor, rugs over the main walking routes, and felt pads under every chair and bedside table. In an apartment, the building’s rules may set what you have to do, which we cover in our guide to soundproof flooring for apartments.

Inside the bedroom itself, a hard floor makes the room a little more echoey. Curtains, a bedhead, a rug and soft furnishings take that away quickly, and a bedroom usually has plenty of all of those.

Carpet and timber side by side

	Carpet	Timber
Warmth underfoot	Warm	Cool without a rug
Noise to rooms below	Quieter	Louder, reduced by underlay and rugs
Cleaning	Holds dust in the pile	Dust sits on the surface and wipes up
Stains and spills	Can soak in and stay	Wipe up if caught quickly
Wear over time	Flattens along walking paths	Can be recoated, and engineered boards can be sanded within their wear layer
Look through the house	Breaks the floor at each bedroom door	Can run continuously from the hallway

Looks and selling later

We aren’t able to put a figure on what timber bedrooms add to a sale price, and we would treat any such figure with caution. What we hear from customers is simpler. When they go to open inspections, worn bedroom carpet makes a house look like it needs work, while a continuous timber floor from the hall into the bedrooms looks finished.

There is also a practical point. Carpet in bedrooms usually needs replacing well before a good timber floor does. If you’re planning to stay a long time, that matters more than resale.

Choosing a timber for bedrooms

Bedrooms are the gentlest rooms in the house, so you have more freedom here than in a kitchen or hallway.

Softer species are fine

Victorian Ash is softer than Blackbutt or Spotted Gum and marks more easily, which is a reason to keep it out of a busy hallway. In a bedroom that barely sees shoes, that doesn’t matter, and its pale, straight grain looks calm. See Victorian Ash smooth.

Warmer tones feel warmer

Colour doesn’t change the temperature, but a warm mid-brown floor makes a bedroom feel more comfortable to most people than a cool grey. Oaks like Caramel Sundae and Natural Oak on our warm browns page are a good starting point. They also hide dust better than very pale or very dark boards. Our guide on how to choose a timber floor colour goes further.

Match the hallway

If the bedrooms open off a timber hallway, use the same board and run it straight through. A threshold strip at every bedroom door breaks the floor up and creates an edge that is easy to stub a toe on.

Children’s rooms

Kids’ bedrooms are where the argument for timber is strongest, and where the argument for something soft is strongest too.

On the timber side: spilt drinks, craft glue, slime and the occasional night-time accident come off a hard floor with a cloth. On carpet they tend to stay. Wheeled toys roll easily, block towers stand up, and small pieces like Lego are easier to spot. When the child grows out of the room, the floor doesn’t need replacing with them.

On the soft side: babies and toddlers spend a lot of time sitting and crawling on the floor, and falls are part of learning to walk. A thick play mat or a large rug covers the play area without committing the whole room to carpet, and it can go in the wash or be replaced as the child grows.

A matte brushed surface is the practical choice here, because it hides the scuffs from toy cars and chair legs better than a smooth, glossier finish. We recommend felt pads under the desk chair from the start.

What the change involves

Replacing bedroom carpet with timber is one of the most common jobs we do. The carpet comes up with its underlay, the gripper strips around the walls and every staple, and it all gets taken away. Then the subfloor is checked. Upstairs that is often particleboard sheeting, which may need loose sheets screwed down and squeaks fixed before new boards go over it. Our floor removal and subfloor page explains this part.

Doors often need trimming, because a timber floor can sit at a different height from the carpet it replaces. Built-in robes need emptying if the floor is going inside them. If the stairs are carpeted, it’s worth thinking about them at the same time, since a carpeted stair between two timber floors looks unfinished. Our stairs page covers the options.

The work need not take long. One customer had the carpet upstairs replaced with timber in three days. Another told us how much better their upstairs rooms looked with the new timber. The time for your house depends on the area, the stairs and what turns up under the carpet.

Doing it in stages

You don’t have to do every bedroom the same way. Some families put timber in the main bedroom and hallway and keep carpet in a child’s room for now, or the other way round. Please plan the transitions carefully, and if you might do the rest later, buy enough boards now from the same batch so the colour matches.

Next step

If you’re undecided, take two or three samples home and put them on the bedroom floor for a few days, next to your bedding and furniture. When you’re ready, book a free measure and quote. We’ll lift a corner of the carpet to see what’s underneath, measure the rooms and robes, and price the stairs as a separate line if you want them done. You’re also welcome to call 1300 690 160 or visit us at 2/1386 Toorak Road, Camberwell.