Looking at your home before remodeling, it can be hard to decide what kind of flooring to choose. In one corner, traditional and warm carpet; in the other, sleek and efficient hardwood. When weighing the costs versus the value and quality of your home, which way do you go?
Hardwood floors have been shown to be a high-quality investment in your home, whether you stay or whether you’re planning to sell. They also have advantages to your family’s health and comfort over carpet. Hardwood is more of an investment up front, but it’s an investment that can pay off soon.
Durability
Carpet has to be replaced every 5–15 years, depending on foot traffic and climate. When you have to replace carpet, you have to tear out the whole thing and place a whole new unit in, which is messy and takes time.
Hardwood, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be replaced when it needs to be refreshed. In fact, hardwood floors can last a lifetime. It could be re-coated, which is a quick process of lightly sanding plus application of one more coat of polyurethane or refinished with a sander, stain and polyurethane coating. Unless you have experience refinishing floors, you may want to hire a professional to do it. It’s a faster process, and likely won’t have to be done often.
Aesthetic
More home designs are trending sleek, going for the homey color of hardwood over carpet. Combining the look of modern furniture with hardwood throughout living areas, bedrooms and bathrooms helps create a uniform appearance and contribute to the décor consistency of a home.
Hardwood also ages better than carpet does. Even if it warps or is discolored with age or lack of care, it will look better over time than carpet, which would make it more marketable to buyers as well. Trade publication Realtor Magazine notes that some realtors have seen a 2.5 percent increase in sale price for homes with hardwood.
Health
Carpets are notorious for being havens for mold, pet dander, dust and pollen, all triggering allergies. Mold is especially common if you live in an area with a wet climate. Those particles can become airborne during renovations, vacuuming, or daily activities like children playing on the carpet. Children are also more likely to be exposed to it because they put their hands in their mouths after playing on it. Some carpets also used chemicals that emit odors and pollutants; new carpet installation has been associated with infants wheezing and coughing in their first year of life, according to the American Lung Association. The association recommends choosing hard-surface flooring and rugs that can be cleaned outside to prevent the risk.
Hardwood is easier to clean than carpet, and while dust is inevitable, it’s easier to take care of without having to worry what’s in the carpet pad or if the vacuum really got it all.
Heat efficiency
We all think of warmth when we think of carpet — it’s fuzzy and it makes sense why it would be warmer than a hard floor. However, having a hardwood floor actually does have heat efficiency advantages over carpet.
Carpet is an insulator, trapping air. When baseboard heat fills a room, the carpet will get warm, but it will stop the air from moving. Wood, on the other hand, is a heat conductor and will absorb the heat, moving it through a house. That allows the heat to move more easily through the house. Wood also has a higher thermal mass than carpet, so that while it takes longer to get warm, it hangs onto that heat longer and can reduce temperature fluctuation.
Added value
In the end, remodeling a home to put in hardwood floor may mostly pay for itself. The 2015 survey from the National Association of the Remodeling Industry found that remodeling homes to put in hardwood floors resulted in recovering about 91 percent of the cost at time of sale. The average cost to put in new hardwood was about $5,500, while the average sale value increase was $5,000.
Refinishing breaks even, too. The same survey found that an average refinishing job cost of $2,500 resulted in about $2,500 of increased sale value.
There’s also the attraction for buyers. Many buyers are reporting looking specifically for home with hardwood floors as opposed to carpet, in part because of the aesthetics and in part because of the function. Whether you’re looking to stay or sell, hardwood floors are an investment in your home.
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