We have a three storey house where the living room is on the first floor and kitchen on the ground, so the lower stairs get way more traffic than usual. The beige carpet we had is trashed - deep down in the pile there's dirt that can't be removed.
I'm thinking some kind of twill would be the hardest wearing?
Bump?
It's all about the fibre, not the pattern or type of carpet. Polypropylene pile is completely stain resistant - you can even bleach it - but it doesn't recover well from compression. That would be my choice for a home with young children, if that is your situation (?)
It's not stains that are the problem, it's flattening and ground in dirt from the traffic. Especially in summer. Downstairs hallway is tiled so and dirt brought in from the garden ends up in the stairs carpet. It's packed down into the pile which is now flattened.
There really isn't a solution, apart taking your shoes of as you enter the house! A polypropylene carpet could be vigorously cleaned on a regular basis. The colour afterwards would be like new, but the compression would still be there, I'm afraid.
Hardwood stairs then 🙂
Twill would not get trampled tho..?
Hardwood stairs would be a good choice, and possibly add value to your property. Not sure about the twill, though, but obviously anything without a pile won't have a pile to compress :-), but again, consider the choice of fibre.
Hardwood stairs way too much. Plus we put wood floors in the living room and bedrooms so even if we could find a matching wood there's be a join. Would have been a cool thing to do when we moved in, of course, but didn't really know what was possible at the time.