This one is easy.

Sanitation

Laminate flooring is very easy to clean. All you need is a swiffer broom and some laminate floor cleaner. You can even vacuum laminate flooring. I have personally removed thousands of yards of carpet. It is always a nasty and very dusty job. There is always lots of dirt, sand and evidence of little creepy crawly creatures living beneath it. I used to do home shows and carried a bucket of stuff that I got from beneath a small living room that I pulled the carpet out of. It was a great demonstration of what you find under your carpet and pad. It was really disgusting. Carpet is nasty and pad is even worse. You can’t really clean carpet. You may think it’s clean but it is not. You may have noticed that when you get spots in your carpet professionally cleaned, the spots come back within a couple of weeks. When you spill anything on carpet, it goes straight through the knap and gets in the backing and the padding. You can’t get this out. Just think germs and lots of them.

Stains

I owned a carpet store for many years and I had a huge file of warranty claims on carpet. Mostly for stains. Customers would think something was wrong with the carpet but there rarely was. Carpet stains easily, no matter what chemical treatments they put on it. If these treatments really work why do they change them every couple of years with something new and improved? I rarely have a warranty claim on laminate flooring. As a matter of fact I can only remember 2 in the last 16 years. Carpet is disposable flooring. It lasts until you spill something in the wrong place and then it looks bad until you finally get tired of looking at it and dispose of it.

Chemicals and off gassing

Carpet is a petroleum based product and is full of stabilizing chemicals. Formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals are in carpet and off gas (pollute your home) for years. Kronotex and Kronoswiss laminate floors have no chemical off gassing. They have spent years and lots of money researching and developing their product line so that it is guaranteed to be totally free of these in home pollutants.

Quality of carpet

The overall quality of carpet has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. When I used to sell carpet I would always recommend a nylon fiber as opposed to olefin or plastic fiber. I recently was helping a customer try to find some carpet and we could hardly find anything with a nylon fiber. It is just about all polyester or olefin. This cheaper fiber tracks or goes flat in hallways and heavy traffic areas in no time. These plastic fibers scratch easily and then stains get in the scratch sites. You can’t clean them as they get older. Also, about 10 years ago they changed the backing on carpet from a jute to an imitation jute. This stuff is made to look like jute but it is a latex based product. When you get it wet it deteriorates. This includes steam cleaning. This is called action back and it is very flexible and easy to stretch in but loses its tautness and gets wrinkles in it within 6 months and you have to keep re-stretching it. Carpeting now is junk until you get into the forty to fifty dollar a yard range. In short, invest in a clean, much more permanent floor.