Simon Caster:

If you opt for carpet, Frank's recommendation to go with nylon is right on, but don't buy ANY nylon carpet. Buy a solution dyed level loop nylon carpet for maximum durability and ease of cleaning.

Carpets are made from three different kinds of synthetic fibers and one natural fiber:
1. Nylon
2. Polyester
3. Olefin
4. Wool, and
5. bath mats, which aren't really "carpet" are typically made of acrylic plastic. That's that "PMMA" (polymethyl methacrylate) stuff I keep talking about all the time.

Nylon is the strongest fiber used to make carpet, and there's a natural resiliency to a level loop that can't be beaten, so over 90% of the commercial carpet produced, sold and installed in North America is level loop nylon carpet.

Now, DuPont has spent a king's ransom trying to make their nylon fiber (called "Antron") resistant to stains, and that money was largely wasted. A smarter way to make a stain resistant nylon carpet is to make a "solution dyed" nylon carpet.

Solution dying simply means that the carpet gets it's colour from tiny solid coloured particles that are added to the nylon plastic before it gets drawn into a fiber. That's exactly the way most plastics are coloured. A red telephone is red because the clear or transluscent plastic it's made of has gazllions of tiny red solid particles inside it. Consequently, you can use bleach straight out of the jug to remove otherwise impossible stains from a solution dyed nylon carpet without harming the carpet. That's because the stain is on the outside of the plastic carpet fiber, but the pigments giving the carpet colour are encased within the carpet fiber very much like raisins in raising bread. So, the bleach will take the colour out of the stain sticking to the surface of the carpet fiber, but not out of the pigments encased inside the carpet fiber.

So, long story short, you can use bleach straight out of the jug to remove otherwise impossible stains from SOLUTION DYED nylon carpet without harming the carpet.

Obviously, you have little to lose and much to gain by buying a door mat size sample of SOLUTION DYED NYLON carpet from the discontinued samples stack for $2 at your local carpet retailer and torturing it with Saniflush, Easter Egg dye, KoolAid, red wine and anything else you can think of to prove to yourself that what I'm saying is true. Just put the bleach into a spray bottle and apply it to the stain. Work the bleach in so that the bleach spreads all over all the solution dyed nylon fibers to remove the stain. Now suck up the used bleach with the vaccuum hose of a wet/dry vaccuum cleaner applied directly to the carpet pile. Replace the bleach in the spray bottle with clean water and wet the carpet down and then pull out the soiled water several times to remove the residual bleach from the carpet.

I wouldn't install anything but a solution dyed nylon carpet in my 21 living rooms. That's cuz I can buy solution dyed nylon carpet for $18 per square yard, it'll last longer than carpet made of any other kind of plastic, and I can use bleach to remove everything short of a cigarette burn from it. The last two solution dyed nylon carpets I installed in apartments were both made by Shaw and were from their "Franchise" series of carpet. The Franchise series has about 20 different colours of carpet in it, but they all have the same sort of pattern to them. They're all level loop solution dyed nylon carpets suitable for residential or commercial applications.

Now, every kind of flooring will wear out fastest where the pressure applied to it is greatest, and most of the pressure on a stair tread is applied at the small nose of the tread.

So, instead of having carpet professionally installed on your steps, consider gluing vinyl or synthetic rubber stair nosings to your stair treads first, and then gluing carpet to the treads and risers:

http://www.johnsonite.com/LinkClick....A%3d&tabid=802

Johnsonite (Home) makes stair nosings in both vinyl and synthetic rubber in 867 trillion colours. For a house, vinyl is plenty durable enough. I have synthetic rubber stair treads on the front and back stair cases in my building, and they're bullet proof. You cannot carve your initials into synthetic rubber with anything short of a razor blade, and you cannot leave a burn in it with anything short of a propane torch. Synthetic rubber stair nosings in a house would be overkill, but I like overkill and support it 100%.

So, if you're concerned about the carpet wearing out on the stair nosings, install vinyl or rubber moldings made specifically for stair nosings first, and then install the carpet on each step tread and riser separately. I'd melt the edges of each piece of carpet with a heat gun (or steam iron maybe) to prevent it from ravelling.

You can order Johnsonite vinyl or rubber stair nosings from any store that sells flooring. Generally, you order this kinda stuff from the store's commercial sales department. Johnsonite also makes vinyl and synthetic rubber stair treads to cover the whole step, but in my view, carpeting is more appropriate in a residential setting.

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