Vinyl Flooring vs. Carpet in your Mobile Home

Most mobile homes have a mix of vinyl flooring and carpet in the home while others have vinyl throughout or come without flooring. There are a few things to think about when choosing what you would like for the flooring in your home.

Standard Mobile Home Flooring

In the standard setup, mobile homes and manufactured homes will have vinyl flooring (i.e. Linoleum) in the “wet” areas and carpet everywhere else. “Wet” areas include places like the kitchen, bathrooms, entryways, and mudroom. You can quickly wipe up any water, food, or mud off a vinyl floor, but you can’t from carpet, so it just makes sense to put vinyl floors in areas with a good chance something wet is going to hit your floor.

In a standard setup, carpet is found everywhere else like the living room, den, and bedrooms of your home. A lot of people enjoy the look and feel of carpet, so no wonder it is a common option for a lot of people when buying a new home.

Why Might I Not Want Carpet?

There are a few reasons some people opt to put vinyl flooring throughout their home, instead of just in the wet areas. Some areas of the country have a lot of sand, like West Texas or San Antonio.  When sand finds its way into the home and then into your carpet, it shortens the life of the carpet and is difficult to remove. Depending upon what might get tracked into the home, you might like how easy it is to clean a vinyl floor.

If you have allergies, especially to something like dust mite dander, you may also like how there is less places for dust and therefore allergens to hide with a vinyl floor. You can sweep the dust off of a vinyl floor, but a vacuum can never suck all of the allergens out of a carpet.

If you have children that like to “bring the outside in” you may also like the easy cleaning and stain resistant benefits of vinyl flooring. 

You want to note, on multi-section homes or double-wide homes with linoleum throughout, you will find a “transition bar” to cover the seam between the sections of the home where the seam is found in an open space. These transition bars are low profile and will match your flooring, but you will not have a seamless look between one section of the house to the other.

Why Might I Want Carpet Floors?

As we said, a lot of people enjoy the look and feel of carpet, plus socks are less likely to slip on carpet making it easier to walk around if you like to walk around in socks while at home.

If you live in colder climates, you also know carpet doesn’t transfer the cold of the floor to your feet as quickly as solid flooring types. While many people love their all vinyl floor homes in San Antonio, folks in northern climates love how their feet don’t feel as cold on their carpeted floors during the winter months.

What if I Want Something Different for My Floor?

That’s a great question. Many manufactured home factories give you the option to install your own flooring after delivery. These homes come with the exposed sub-floor “ready” to receive your new floor. You do need to be mindful to clean and double check no construction debris remains on the sub-floor before you install your new floor, and there may be some areas that needed to be sanded or in some other way prepped to make the sub-floor ready for your new flooring.

What Flooring Option is Right for You?

Flooring is obviously a personal preference, but we find the region you live in is a big factor. For instance, vinyl flooring throughout is popular in southern and sandy areas while carpet is more popular as you look further north. 

Are you not sure what to do? There is always the option to install vinyl flooring throughout and then use area rugs to fill in key places. Using area rugs not only gives you carpeted areas, it is easier to swap out an area rug when it becomes stained or is worn down rather than trying to replace the carpet in an entire room.