Lewes

Wool is the carpet for Lewes: twists and loops in natural colours that suit old rooms, fitted over an underlay chosen to even out a floor that has settled over two centuries. The stairs in the older houses are the test of a carpet fitter, steep and turning, sometimes with a door at the top, and a runner on painted treads is often the right answer.

Our carpet fitters measure these houses slowly and quote for exactly what they need, including the doors that will want easing and the thresholds that will want a proper bar.

Luxury vinyl tile answers a question Lewes asks a lot: how to get a warm, level, waterproof kitchen floor into a house whose original floor is anything but level. The answer is preparation, ply and a latex skim over boards or a levelling compound over an old slab, and then a plank or herringbone LVT laid from a centre line.

In the village extensions with underfloor heating, glue down LVT is the best floor there is, and it runs cleanly up to the old brick or stone where the two parts of the house meet.

Sheet vinyl in bathrooms and utility rooms, cut to awkward old shapes and sealed at every edge, is a quiet, sensible floor in a house where nothing is square. Laminate suits the later terraces and the estates, and the rental houses of the town, fitted with the right underlay and an expansion gap that respects how much an old house moves through the year.

Lewes stairs are rarely square. We measure every tread, cut and fold around every winder, and fit runners with rods where the treads are painted or stripped, as they so often are in the Georgian and older houses. On the narrower village staircases a fully fitted carpet over a firm underlay is the quieter, warmer choice.