When I was 19 years old, I moved into my first home of my own. I lived there with Bee, then about two years old, and her dad. It was a new build – a teeny tiny thing with a living room, small kitchen and two small bedrooms. We were renting it, obviously, and the landlord was clearly not looking to splash out on the fixtures and fittings.
I imagine him having a conversation with the builders along these lines:
‘Here are the carpet swatches we’ve got,’ says the builder in my head, ‘what do you want to go for?’
‘Hmmm…’ says the landlord, ‘they’re all a little bit carpety. A bit warm and cosy looking. Do you have something cheaper? Something a bit more like the sort of mat you wipe your feet on as you come into a supermarket?’
‘Well,’ says the builder, ‘we have this really scratchy, brown cord, but it’s pretty nasty. We’d normally only put that in prison visiting rooms.’
‘It’s perfect!’ says the landlord, ‘let’s have that in the whole house!’
It wasn’t nice.
In fact, in the final few months that I lived there, it became a bit of a focus for a wave of depression that saw me ending up on a mattress on the floor of my mum’s dining room for a couple of months. (I got up during the day, it wasn’t that bad, I just slept there.)
‘Don’t make me go back to that carpet!’ I would say.
Now I’m not saying the carpet was totally to blame for my mental health, but it certainly didn’t help, and it’s definitely made me more aware of flooring generally.
And in that vein, here are seven different floors that I noticed this week that I really would NOT want in my house.
Perfect for a hotel lobby (which is was), not so cool for a living room.
I call this one ‘lift interior chic’.
I actually quite liked this carpet in a restaurant I visited at the weekend. But in my small house? I think it might bring on a migraine…
This is the one that reminded me most of the ‘depression carpet’ – it’s the mat inside a station waiting room door. Can you imagine how scratchy this feels?? You just wouldn’t pick that for a house would you??
This carpet ran up the stairs of another hotel I stayed in. Beautiful on a large, old fashioned sweeping staircase, not so nice in my tiny bedroom.
Well this is just gorgeous isn’t it? This is the toilet of my local train station, where I stopped to do my make up on the way to give a talk in Bristol for social media week.
No thank you.
In collaboration with Luxury Flooring and their #myflooringnightmare campaign.
Is this post just an excuse to show off the lovely floral shoes with the red straps? Hmmm? Is it? We know your game, missy.
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Damn it, you’re on to me…
What a great collection of horrendous floor coverings!
They are lovely shoes and of course horrible floors.