Carpet cost dataset

What a foot of room width costs you

National figures, one room, mid-range carpet, standard cushion, old floor lifted. Read down the waste column rather than the area column: that is where the money is.

The jump happens between 14 × 12 and 13 × 13. The second room has one square foot more floor than the first has, and it buys almost twice the carpet, because the short wall crossed twelve feet and the second strip has to be bought a full twelve feet wide however little of it gets used. Notice too that the fifteen-foot roll is only cheaper in the rows where it saves a strip: on a room that already fits, it is dearer.

What the grade changes

National figures for the default job: three rooms of 14 × 12, standard cushion, old floor lifted, furniture moved.

The cushion under it is the cheaper decision and the one that decides how long the carpet lasts, because what wears a carpet out is the backing flexing every time somebody stands on it. Denser, not thicker: too soft a pad does the opposite and can void a manufacturer warranty.

The two roll widths

12 ft roll (standard)

Almost everything on a retail floor comes 12 feet wide. It is the default because it is what you will be offered unless you ask.

15 ft roll

A narrower range of styles, usually a special order, and often a little dearer per foot. On a room wider than twelve feet it can still work out cheaper, because it turns two strips into one.

Seams are not a separate question: they fall out of the same arithmetic. A room wider than the roll needs a second strip, and where there are two strips there is a seam. It is also why offcuts cannot simply be turned sideways and used elsewhere — carpet pile has a direction, and two pieces laid opposite ways look like two different carpets under the same light.

Line items

The three grades are alternatives, never more than one, and so are the two cushions. The carpet lines are priced per square foot of ROLL; the cushion is priced per square foot of floor, because it comes six feet wide and cuts with far less waste.

The reasoning behind each figure

Written out so a carpet fitter can point at the exact assumption that is wrong. A number with no reasoning behind it cannot be corrected.

Carpet, builder gradeestimated, ±36%

• Priced per square foot of ROLL, which is what you actually buy, not per square foot of room. On a room that fits the roll width those two are the same number; on one that does not, they are not, and the difference is the whole point of this page.
• Thin pile at a low face weight, usually polyester. It passes the federal flammability standard because everything sold as carpet in the United States has to, but that standard is a floor and not a measure of quality.
• The band is wide because carpet is sold on promotion more often than it is sold at list, and the same roll can be two different prices in the same month.

Carpet, mid rangeestimated, ±31%

• Priced per square foot of roll, not of room. Solution-dyed nylon or a heavier polyester at a face weight that survives a lounge, which is what most of the market buys.
• Fibre matters more than the price tag: solution-dyed means the colour goes through the filament rather than sitting on it, which is why it takes bleach without going pale. That is worth asking about and it is not always what the dearer roll has.

Carpet, premiumestimated, ±40%

• Priced per square foot of roll, not of room. Heavier face weight and a tighter twist, which is what actually decides whether a carpet still stands up in the traffic lane after five years.
• The top of the band is wool. It is the only fibre on this page that is not petrochemical, it costs what it costs, and it behaves differently with water: it takes a spill better and a flood far worse.

Carpet cushion, 6 lb rebondestimated, ±36%

• Priced over the floor area rather than the roll area, because cushion comes six feet wide and cuts with far less waste than carpet does. Five per cent is added for trimming.
• Rebond is what almost every quote assumes: the marbled cushion made from recycled foam offcuts. Six pound density and seven sixteenths of an inch is the common specification.

Carpet cushion, 8 lb rebondestimated, ±35%

• Priced over the floor area plus five per cent for trimming, same as the standard cushion.
• The upgrade that matters is DENSITY, not thickness. A denser pad stops the carpet backing flexing every time somebody walks on it, and that flexing is what wears a carpet out from underneath. A thicker but softer pad does the opposite and can void a manufacturer warranty.

Tack strip and staplesestimated, ±41%

• The strip of wood full of angled pins that runs round the perimeter and holds the carpet under tension. It is cheap and it is the reason a carpet stays flat instead of rippling.
• Priced over the whole perimeter. In practice the doorways come out and the closets go in, and it lands close enough that itemising it further would be false precision.

Seaming tapeestimated, ±41%

• Heat-activated tape under every joint between two strips. The quantity is not asked for: it falls out of the room and the roll width, because a room wider than the roll needs a second strip and a second strip needs a seam.
• A seam is the place a carpet opens first. It is also why the pile of every strip has to run the same way, which is what stops an installer using the offcut from one room turned sideways in another.

Door transitions and thresholdsestimated, ±52%

• One per doorway, modelled at one and a half doorways per room, which is about what a bedroom and a hallway opening come to.
• This is the line that is quoted per room and delivered per doorway, and it is where a cheap job shows: a carpet that dies into a strip of aluminium at every door was cheap for a reason.

Stair carpet, cushion and fixingsestimated, ±50%

• Stairs are priced per step and never by the square foot, because the square footage of a stair has almost nothing to do with the work in it.
• A step takes roughly two and a half square feet of carpet once the tread and the riser are wrapped, plus cushion cut to the tread, plus the fixings. The band covers the difference between a straight flight and one with a winder at the turn.

Carpet installer: lay cushion, cut, seam and power stretch

• Two hours of set-up plus roughly one hour per 55 square feet of floor, and an extra half hour for every seam, because a seam is cut, trimmed, taped and rolled rather than simply laid.
• ⚠️ The wage is official BLS data adjusted to your area, with one caveat this page will not hide: BLS publishes a carpet installer wage (SOC 47-2041) for only 40 of the 530 areas in our index, so across most of the country this hour is priced from the broader construction and extraction group for your own area instead. The hours are our estimate either way.
• Power stretching is the part worth insisting on. A carpet pushed into place with a knee kicker will ripple within a couple of years; one stretched properly with a power stretcher will not. It costs the installer time, not material, which is exactly why it is the first thing dropped from a cheap quote.

Carpet installer: wrap and fix each step

• Three quarters of an hour a step. Stairs are the slowest carpet work there is: every tread is measured, cut and fixed on its own, and the installer is working on a staircase while doing it.
• The wage is official BLS data adjusted to your area where a carpet installer figure is published for it, and from the broader construction group where it is not. The hours per step are our estimate.

Labourer: move furniture out and back

• An hour a room, both directions, which is what an empty-ish bedroom takes. It is hours and not a materials lot, so it moves with the wage published for your area — which it would not if we had called moving a wardrobe a material.
• This is the line most often quoted as free and delivered as a condition. Ask whether it includes beds taken apart and put back, because that is where the time actually goes.

Labourer: lift the old carpet, cushion and staples

• One hour per 250 square feet, plus half an hour a room. Lifting carpet is fast; pulling the several hundred staples that held the old cushion down is not, and that is where the time goes.
• The wage is official BLS data adjusted to your area; the hours are our estimate.

Haul away and tip the old carpet and cushionestimated, ±51%

• The tipping fee and the trip, not the labour, which is priced separately above. Old carpet is bulky rather than heavy, so this is charged by volume at the transfer station and the band is wide because that gate fee is entirely local.
• A few areas have carpet recycling and a few charge a surcharge for it. Neither is national, so neither is modelled.

Carpenter: refasten the subfloor and fill the dips

• One hour per 200 square feet, plus an hour of set-up. Screwing a squeaky subfloor down to the joists and filling the low spots is the only chance anyone gets to do it, because in an hour it will be under carpet for fifteen years.
• Priced with a carpenter wage rather than a floor layer wage, and that is deliberate: BLS publishes carpenters in 526 of the 530 areas in our index against 40 for carpet installers, so this line is almost always adjusted by its own trade rather than by a fallback.

Delivery and site set-upestimated, ±52%

• Getting the roll to the house and into it. A twelve-foot roll is heavy, awkward and does not go up a tight stair without a second pair of hands, which is a real constraint in a flat or a townhouse.
• Paid once whatever the size of the job, which is part of why a single small room never costs a small amount.

Not included in this dataset

What a big-box retailer charges to install

Retail installation is arranged through local subcontractors and the price is set market by market and changes without notice. We do not publish a figure we cannot source. What is offered instead is the installer labour above at the wage published for your own area, which is the number any quote should be measured against.

Asbestos in what is under the carpet

Nine-by-nine vinyl tile and the black mastic under it, common in houses built before the eighties, can contain asbestos, and so can some old sheet flooring backings. That is not something to price cheaply or to guess at: it needs testing first and licensed work if positive. See the EPA on asbestos in the home. Nothing on this page covers it.

The smell of a new carpet

New carpet, its adhesive and its cushion give off volatile organic compounds for a while after fitting. The EPA covers what VOCs are and what ventilation does about them. It is a real thing and it is not a cost line, so it is named here rather than priced.

Permits

No jurisdiction we know of requires a permit to replace a floor covering.

Stair rods, borders, bindings and inlays

Decorative work on a stair or a bound rug from remnant is a different job, priced by the piece and by the yard of binding, and it is not what the per-step figure here covers.

Repairing the floor structure

The subfloor line refastens sheathing and fills dips. A bouncing floor, a cracked joist or rot from a leak is structural work and is not in these figures.

The one federal rule that applies

Every carpet and rug sold as floor covering in the United States has to pass the flammability test in CPSC, 16 CFR Part 1630 — Standard for the Surface Flammability of Carpets and Rugs. Eight specimens are exposed to a standard ignition source and the carpet fails if the char reaches within an inch of the edge of the test frame. It applies to every fibre and every construction. It is worth knowing that it exists and worth knowing that it is a floor rather than a grade: everything on sale passes it, so it separates nothing. Retrieved 2026-08-22.