Advantages of Champagne and Beige Color Carpet

Aesthetics

• Using a different carpet color in each room -- especially connecting rooms -- breaks up the space and makes your home look smaller. The reverse is also true. Using the same carpet throughout keeps the eye moving and makes your home look larger; champagne or beige colors work well for this effect. The light tones enhance the illusion of more space. Their neutrality keeps the focus on your furnishings and decor, unlike bold, bright and dark colors, which draw the eye to the floor.

Versatility

• Champagne or beige carpet serves as a blank decorating canvas. Both complement most decorating color schemes and styles, so you can change your home's look as often as you wish. No matter what you choose -- casual to formal, traditional to contemporary -- champagne and beige flooring just blend into the mix. They even work with styles best suited to hardwoods and fine area rugs. Just layer your patterned rug over the carpet, with the appropriate pad; the eye focuses on the decorative rug and ignores any visible carpet beyond it.

Resale

• If you plan to put your home on the market during the life of your carpet, choosing champagne or beige could make it easier to sell. Real estate agents and home staging experts often recommend installing neutral carpet, and champagne and beige fit the bill. The "Real Estate Field Manual" even includes neutral carpet among its phrasing for advertising selling points. Because champagne and beige carpets work with so many different interior design styles, they allow home buyers to visualize their furnishings in your space. In contrast, that patterned trellis carpet you loved in a decorating magazine could be another person's deal-breaker.

Maintenance

• If you're prone to spilling red wine, or stomping through mud and motor oil, you probably shouldn't select light carpet colors. However, if you're reasonably easy on your furnishings and more concerned with upkeep than stains, champagne or beige carpet requires less maintenance than dark colors.

  With dark carpets, every speck of dust and lint seems to show, and you need to vacuum at least once a day. Dust, lint and even pet hair -- unless your pet is solid black -- blend in better on champagne and beige carpets, so you can vacuum less frequently. Test this by laying a dark carpet sample next to a beige or champagne sample in a high-traffic area of your home. You'll see debris on the dark sample much sooner. Use bath towels in the appropriate colors if you don't have carpet samples available.