Carpet and stair runners to protect your high traffic areas

Protect your high traffic areas from dirt and wear and tear with carpet runners and stair runners. Constant foot traffic bringing in dirt and mud can ruin an expensive wall-to-wall carpet. Runners are the ideal solution for protecting your carpets.

Carpet runners not only provide a means of protection but they also add to the decor of your home. An elegant runner in an entrance or hallway creates a striking first impression to your home. Carpet runners also provide a means of visually connecting one room to another.

Carpet runners come in pre-cut lengths or custom-made to suit your individual requirements. This is especially convenient for stair runners where it is important to have an exact fit.

There are many advantages to installing stair runners in your home. Not only do they enhance the look and feel of your stairs, they help to deaden the noise from heavy foot steps, and protect the stairs from daily wear and tear. They also help to cushion the little ones in your household from those minor slips and falls.

Carpet and stair runners are available in a range of materials including wool, silk, polypropylene, nylons or a mix of one or more of these products. Stair and carpet runners can be hand-made or machine manufactured. The choice is really a personal one and comes down to preference and budget.

Once upon a time, our mothers used vinyl rug runners to protect their floors and carpets from dirt and damage. Rug runners are growing in popularity again, but they’re no longer textured, hard vinyl, or simply strips of leftover carpeting cut to fit a narrower room. Instead, designers are creating patterns and motifs that work especially well in narrow, long spaces to make the most of the design possibilities.

A rug runner can help accent a narrow entry hall, bringing colors from two rooms together to create a natural transition from one room to another. In the process, it can help protect your floor surface from damage, provide a natural pathway for people to walk on and serve as an anchor for design details in space that is often left bare and unused. It can warm a stone floor, accent a wooden one and protect your good carpet.
 
Rug runners are narrow strips of carpet or rug that are generally laid down the center of a hallway or narrow room. There’s nothing that confines their use to hallways though. Rug runners make natural dividers in large rooms, for instance.

A rug runner on a bare floor—or in a contrasting color to the basic carpet in a room—can define a path between furniture groupings, or serve as a visual dividing line between a sitting and dining area.

There are many uses other than the traditional ones for rug runners. An outdoor patio rug runner, for instance, can subtly encourage children to stay to a particular path when traveling from pool to garden to patio. A textured outdoor rug runner can also provide a non-slippery surface for walkways and stairs in the patio area.
 
Likewise, a cotton rug runner in a bright color can serve as an area accent in a nursery, either in front of the crib or on the floor by the changing table.

Have a long counter in your kitchen that runs from sink to wall with cabinets between? A rug runner that picks up colors from your kitchen wallpaper and floor can provide a comfortable path along its edge, and keep your feet from getting weary while standing at the sink. There are also rug runners designed specifically for stairways that can help reduce wear in the center of stairs where feet usually land.

Have you ever seen the vast selection of stair runners, and wondered what they are useful for? You’re not alone. Many people don’t understand the great needs that stair runners fill until they truly begin to investigate these rugs. To help you get thinking about stair runners, we’ve outlined four of the best reasons that you should consider adding a stair runner to your room’s décor.

The most obvious reason to add a stair runner to your room’s décor is that will add a great dimension to your decoration. For example, if your home is covered in hardware floors, you likely have area rugs scattered throughout it. Why not carry that great design look to your stairs? A perfectly selected stair runner will complement the design and add to it.

Next, noise pollution is another great reason to add a stair runner to your home. We’ve all heard the clumping of someone going up and down stairs, but with a stair runner, you could reduce that noise. Just think, no more waking up in the middle of the night as someone noisily goes down the stairs to get a glass of water!

If you have carpet on your stairs, you should know that it is one of the first areas where the carpet is likely to get worn and threadbare. But you can prevent this from happening by putting a stair runner over the carpet. If you don’t, and the carpet becomes worn, you may end up having to replace all of your downstairs carpet if the color or pattern of yours has become discontinued.

Finally, if the carpet on your stairs is already worn and threadbare, but you can’t afford to replace it, you could use a stair runner as a way to cover up the damage. Just place it on the stairs to give the illusion of new carpet, and not the old tattered carpet.

So you see, stair runners serve many purposes.