Carpet is the largest part of what we do, and the question we get asked about it more than any other is what it costs to install. It is a fair question with an unsatisfying answer, because two houses with the same square footage can be quoted a long way apart and both quotes can be right. The reason is that a carpet quote is made of four numbers, and most people only shop one of them.
This guide sets out what carpet installation costs across Newberg, Sherwood, Tigard, Tualatin and the rest of Portland's Westside, what is inside the number, what moves it, and the two places where spending less costs more.
The range, honestly
Across Oregon, installed carpet with pad typically runs from around three dollars per square foot for a basic polyester in a bedroom, up to eight to twelve dollars per square foot for a dense nylon, a patterned Karastan or a wool. Most family homes doing several rooms land somewhere in the middle, and a whole main floor or an upstairs of three or four bedrooms plus a hallway and stairs is a job in the low-to-mid thousands.
Those are market ranges rather than our price list. We measure every job in person, because a number produced over the phone is a guess. We would also rather talk you into the right specification than the expensive one, and the right specification for a bedroom and for a hallway are not the same carpet.
The four numbers inside a carpet quote
The carpet. The material itself, priced by the square yard in the trade and usually shown to you by the square foot. This is the number people shop, and it is the one with the widest range. Fiber, density and construction decide it, and we explained how to read those in choosing carpet that lasts.
The pad. The cushion under the carpet, and the line most often thinned to make a quote look cheaper. The pad decides how the carpet feels, how quiet the room is, and how long the carpet lasts, because it absorbs the impact that would otherwise crush the fibers. A moisture-barrier pad costs a little more and is worth it in any house with pets.
The labor. Removing the old floor, preparing the subfloor, fitting the tack strip, laying and power-stretching the carpet, seaming, and finishing at every transition. Stairs are priced as their own line, because every tread is a separate fitting.
Removal and disposal. Taking up the old carpet and pad, and hauling them away. We quote this as part of the job, so the number you sign covers getting the old floor out.
What moves the number up or down
The specification
The difference between a low-density polyester and a dense nylon or a Mohawk SmartStrand is the largest single variable, and it is also the one that decides whether the carpet still looks right in year eight. Density is durability; softness and color are choices. In a hallway, the family room and on the stairs, that is where the money should go. In a spare bedroom, it does not need to.
Stairs
Stairs are the most skill-dependent work in flooring and the most closely looked at. A flight of stairs takes longer to carpet than a large bedroom, and it is quoted separately. Houses in West Linn and Lake Oswego on hillside lots often have two flights, and it shows in the quote for good reason. Our stairs and trim page explains what a proper stair fitting involves.
The subfloor
Carpet is forgiving of a subfloor that is not perfectly flat, far more so than a hard surface, but it does not fix a subfloor that is soft, squeaking or damaged. In older houses near downtown Newberg or McMinnville we sometimes find sections that need refastening or replacing once the old carpet is up. We tell you what we find before we do anything about it. What we find under your old floor covers the usual surprises.
Waste and layout
Carpet comes in rolls of a fixed width, and a room that does not divide neatly into that width produces waste. An L-shaped room, a room wider than the roll, or a pattern that has to match across a seam all use more carpet than the floor area suggests. This is the measurement people get wrong when they price a job from a floor plan, and it is why we measure in person.
Furniture and access
We move normal household furniture as part of the job. We ask that you clear the small and breakable things. A piano, a waterbed or a room full of built-ins is worth mentioning at the estimate so it is planned for rather than met on the day.
Where saving money costs money
Two places, and we see both regularly on carpets somebody else fitted.
The first is the pad. A cheap pad under a good carpet gives you a floor that feels cheap and wears early, and it can void the manufacturer's warranty, which publishes a minimum pad specification as well as a maximum.
The second is the stretch. Carpet that is kicked in rather than power-stretched goes wavy within a couple of years, and a ripple in a hallway is both a trip hazard and a wear line. We can re-stretch a carpet that has gone wavy, and we will give you an honest read on whether it is worth it against a replacement, but it is a repair that should never have been needed.
How the timing works
Most houses are a single day of installation, and a couple of bedrooms is a morning. The longer wait is the material: carpet is ordered in for your job, so the lead time between signing the quote and the install day is usually a week or two. We give you both dates up front. How long new flooring actually takes walks through the full sequence.
Making it affordable without making it cheap
The most useful thing we can do at an estimate is put the density and the resilient fiber where the traffic is and let the bedrooms take something softer and less expensive. That split normally saves money overall rather than costing it. Financing through Wisetack is available on our work, so a whole-house carpet does not have to wait on the whole budget; ask at the estimate and we will walk you through it.
Norman's Floor Covering has been installing carpet on Portland's Westside since 1978, licensed with the Oregon Construction Contractors Board under CCB 103259, with a ten year labor warranty on every install. The showroom at 900 Industrial Parkway in Newberg has full-size samples of Karastan, Mohawk, Phenix and more, and we bring them to your rooms for a free in-home estimate. For a comparison across all the floors we install, see what flooring costs in Oregon; for how carpet compares with a hard surface room by room, see carpet or LVP. Our carpet page covers the rest.
