Stairs & Stripes

I’ve been trying to get my budget together and in doing so, started shopping around a bit for carpeting for my stairs.  These stairs, by the way, are steep and tiny (Molly – sound familiar?). They are grandfathered in and, if it weren’t really expensive, I’d update them but, since it is expensive, they’ll stay as they are – narrow though they may be.

I’m thinking I need a runner for the stairs that won’t show a lot of dirt (afterall, Miss Tilly will be up and down them) and will mix and match easily with a broad and potentially ever-changing color palette given my fondness of decorating. I considered simply painting them but, I think from a noise standpoint, carpeting will work much better.  They’re carpeted already and, while I don’t want to keep the carpet that’s on them, I do think it’s helped maintain the sturdiness of the stairs over all these years.

So, all of this preamble is about where I’ve landed in my head in terms of what I want.  Stripes.  I think stripes would tick a lot of boxes and, although striped carpet may be a bit trendy, I think it’s the right look for the house.  Check out some of these striped carpets (one of the final shots is the detail of a carpet I’m thinking of getting — whaddya’ think?  And you probably already guessed but the last pic are my stairs as they look at the moment — let’s just consider this the “before” photo.).  I really like the chunkier stripes with variegated width best but the carpet gurus tell me that these don’t work well on stairs that turn the way my stairs do as it’s hard to line them up properly – bummer.