In a hotel corridor, carpet isn’t an aesthetic choice: it’s the only material that cuts the noise of a suitcase trolley at two in the morning before it reaches inside the room. We supply and fit carpet in use class 33 to EN 1307, the only class that stands up to hotel corridor traffic without flattening within two seasons, and contract LVT flooring where cleaning is aggressive or humidity is high. Survey, supply, fitting and disposal of the old floor, all with a single point of contact.
Why corridors still get carpet
A room corridor is a long, narrow tube with hard walls and no absorption. With a rigid floor, every footstep and every wheel becomes noise that creeps under the doors. A low-pile carpet with a needle-punched felt backing cuts impact noise by 25 to 30 dB, more than you’d gain by replacing the door.
It’s one of the few interventions where the acoustic improvement is genuinely noticeable, and noise between rooms is tackled first with furniture and soft materials rather than with masonry work that closes off a floor for weeks.
What’s fallen out of favour is carpet inside the room, and not without reason. In guest rooms the floor needs washing when a guest spills wine, and no carpet survives ten years of stains without mapping out a geography of marks under the desk. The combination that almost always works is carpet in corridors and on stairs, hard flooring in the room, and a removable rug beside the bed.
Use class, and what it actually tells you
EN 1307 classifies textile floor coverings with two numbers: the first indicates the setting and the second the intensity, from 1 to 3. Hospitality spaces need the commercial band, with a first digit of 3. The bare minimum for a lobby or corridor is 33, meaning heavy commercial, and on stairs, where wear concentrates on the nose of each step, it’s worth going even higher.
Behind the rating are more telling numbers. Pile weight, which on a serious 33-rated carpet sits between 800 and 1,200 g/m², pile height, which in corridors shouldn’t exceed 6 mm or trolley wheels start sinking in, and fibre type. Polyamide 6.6 has elastic memory and springs back after compression, while polypropylene costs less and stays crushed wherever the housekeeping trolley passes. If one carpet costs half as much as another of the same class, the difference is almost always there.
On fire reaction, in ordinary spaces the floor can be Class 2, but escape routes require Class 1, and room corridors almost always are escape routes. It’s the point where fire safety rules for furniture and floor coverings stop being advice and become a specification requirement.
Installation methods and types
Broadloom glued down
The solution for long, uniform corridors. 400 cm roll width, low-emission acrylic adhesive, heat-welded or hand-sewn seams. It costs less per square metre and lasts longer, but when it wears out the whole corridor needs redoing. Rolls are laid in the direction of travel, never across it.
Self-adhesive carpet tiles
50×50 cm or 25×100 cm format, dry-laid with a release adhesive. A single damaged tile can be replaced in ten minutes, and a 5% spare stock is kept in storage. They cost 20 to 30% more per square metre, but on a property that can’t close, that’s an insurance policy. Excellent in front of lifts, where wear runs four times higher than the rest of the corridor.
Contract LVT and vinyl
The flooring for rooms and areas cleaned with harsh detergents. It needs a wear layer of at least 0.55 mm and class 33 or 34 to EN ISO 10874. Below 0.55 mm it scratches under chair legs within a year. Glued down onto a level screed, with a tolerance of 2 mm over a 2 m straightedge.
Contract AC5 laminate
A cheaper option for rooms, laid as a floating floor that lets a whole floor be fitted in three days. It has one real limitation: it’s vulnerable to water at the seams, so it has to be ruled out in bathrooms and rooms with a kitchenette. In residences it’s worth spending more and switching to vinyl.
Skirting, thresholds and trims
The part that shows when it’s done badly. Skirting over carpet should be anodised aluminium or lacquered MDF 8 cm high, and must cover the turned-up edge of the textile. Under doors, the joining trim needs to sit exactly in line with the closed leaf, so it’s invisible from either side.
The transition between corridor and room
This is the detail that marks out a job done well. Between corridor carpet and room vinyl there’s a level difference of 4 or 5 mm that needs a ramped brass or aluminium profile, screwed down rather than glued, positioned exactly under the door stop.
There are two typical mistakes. The trim set flush with the outer face of the door, which stays visible from the corridor and collects dirt along the seam. And the carpet cut straight against the frame with no turned-up edge, which starts fraying within six months exactly where every guest rests their suitcase. The turned-up edge should always be done, even if it costs an extra half hour per room.
The carpet’s design is decided together with that of the corridor, because a border strip in a different colour is the cheapest way to give proportion to a corridor that’s too long without touching the walls.
Maintenance: what it really costs to keep
Contract carpet needs daily vacuuming and hot water extraction cleaning twice a year in corridors, four times in the lobby. If that doesn’t happen, the carpet doesn’t just wear out: it gets permanently dirty, which is worse, because a pile clogged with particulate loses its appearance long before it loses its fibres.
Before choosing, it’s worth doing the maths on floor staff. The difference between a carpeted floor and a vinyl one is measured in minutes per room, and on a property where a housekeeper’s cleaning times are already tight, that affects annual cost more than the purchase price of the material itself. In seasonal properties with high staff turnover, textile flooring needs training that’s often missing, so it makes sense to limit it to corridors. The line between fixed covering and removable rugs in prestige areas also depends on whether they can be sent to the laundry at the end of the season.
On a 50-room hotel, replacing the carpet on three floors of corridors takes six or seven working days with the property open, one floor at a time, disposal of the old carpet included. For an exact figure we need the square metreage and a photo of the existing subfloor: you can request a quote with the floor plan of a typical floor.
Frequently asked questions
Can new carpet be laid over the old one?
No, and anyone suggesting it is cutting corners on removal. The old layer holds onto odours and moisture, and the new carpet follows every deformation in the layer beneath it, creases in front of lifts included. The old carpet must be removed, leftover adhesive scraped off, and the subfloor levelled where needed.
How long does carpet last in a hotel corridor?
With use class 33, polyamide 6.6 fibre and regular maintenance, you get eight to ten years before the appearance gives out. In front of lifts and on landings, wear is much faster, and that’s the main reason replaceable tiles make sense in those areas.
Does carpet cause problems with allergies?
The opposite of what people assume. A low-pile carpet traps particulate matter instead of putting it back into circulation with every step, provided it’s vacuumed daily with a rotary-brush machine. The problem starts with irregular maintenance, not with the material itself.
Can you replace the flooring without closing the hotel?
Yes, working floor by floor or in groups of rooms. With glued-down vinyl the room is available again after 24 hours for the adhesive to cure, with carpet tiles even the same day. We agree the sequence with management so that at least two thirds of the rooms stay on sale at all times.