Carpets or hardwood

I personally don’t like laminate floors and carpet gets dirty and is a breeding ground for bacteria. I’d go with hardwood floors.

I installed laminate and I hate it!!! Never, never again. In fact we're getting ready to replace it all with hardwood. Awful stuff.

It is awful. Looks cheap. Hardwood is quite a bit more expensive but it will last a lifetime. And it really isn’t hard to keep clean.

I've lived with bungalow with genuine floors, probably even in the day worth a lot of money. Real wood is good, including if it is from salvage.

I just love the look of real wood floors. My condo in Ca had carpet when I bought it, the first thing I did was have hardwood floors put in. After I did it, several others in the complex did the same thing.

I live in a ridiculous place now, but I've lived earlier in two places I owned and two, maybe three others, arguably interesting re old construction.

Obviously I'm interested in all this and I got fairly adept in time, but I wish I'd paid attention to my interest in architecture before I got to be 40. But if I had, I probably wouldn't have keened onto landscape architecture, another whole world.

So, back to floors.

You have a tract house. You are changing it to beat the band.
In california, some of the houses in the san fernando valley are now worth millions for being themselves, or so I take it. I'm so old I remember as a child when they were being built.

I once owned three houses in Bakersfield for low investment. That was at about the height of my hating tracts. I went along with husband and advisor.
We sold, as we couldn't sustain commitment.

I read Venturi on Decorated Sheds, which didn't twist my thinking so much as it promoted my twisting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Venturi

Years went by in LA and much multimilliondollar silliness, and playful expansiveness.

It's your house, you are free to do what you want (I did), but I hope you start reading about architecture.

We have tiles throughout most of this house, as well as area rugs on top of them in the common areas. Yes, they are easy to clean, but there is absolutely no forgiveness if you drop anything breakable on them. Everything shatters.

They are also very hard on your feet (much like walking on concrete).

They do absorb the heat of the day and help keep the winter heating bill down at night as they release the heat.

I live in a sixty year old house. It's almost completely reno'd, there were hardwood floors when I bought it, but they were badly damaged, beyond repair. I was hoodwinked into believing laminate was the answer. So, four years later, it's chipped, scratched, faded, and there are spaces between the planks that are impossible to fix. It looks terrible before and after I wash it too...
I'm going to replace the 4 year old carpet as well. Dogs and carpet do not mix, I didn't have the pups when we redid the place. I'm tired of constantly having to steam clean. I'll buy some throw rugs for the bedrooms and stairs, but it'll be hardwood through and through, not the basement though - too cold in the winter.

I will suggest you carpet because they are more durable and easy to clean.