I won't ever have carpet again -- no matter what I did to clean it, never felt it was really clean. We have 18" tile in most of the house, except for high end laminate in living/dining rooms and the 3 bedrooms (one of which is my quilt room). LOVE it -- I have a very low pile area rug right under my sewing table (for comfort & warmth), but when pins are dropped I can easily see them. I've stepped on pins before when I had carpeting and that's not fun. Plus I have 2 fur babies that I want safe from stepping on pins, too. When I want to clean the area rug its easily done (take out to the driveway, wet down and scrub with a scrub brush, rinse and hang onto the chain link fence to dry). Not expensive to replace, either. These days I'm all for easy, not expensive, keeping clean and safety!