If you have never booked a flooring company to come to your house before, the phrase "free home visit" can sound a little vague — or a little worrying. Will someone turn up with a clipboard and a hard sell? Do you need to have tidied the whole house? What if you have no idea what you want yet? This guide walks through exactly what a free home visit from Cambridgeshire Carpets involves, step by step, so that homeowners across Peterborough (PE1–PE7) know what to expect before they pick up the phone.
The short version: we come to you, we measure properly, we bring samples so you can see them in your own light, and you get a written, itemised quote. There is no fee, no obligation and no pressure. Everything else below is the detail.
Why we visit the home rather than quote from a floor plan
Plenty of firms will give you a "price" over the phone or from a sketch. We do not, and there is a good reason for it. A flooring quote is only as accurate as the measurements and the subfloor information behind it. A hallway in a 1930s semi in Walton or Woodston rarely has square walls; a new-build in Hampton Vale or Cardea may have a concrete screed that is still drying out; a Victorian terrace off Oundle Road might have floorboards that need levelling before anything goes down. None of that shows up on a floor plan.
Measuring in person means the quote we give you is the quote you pay. It also means we can spot the things that cause problems later — damp, uneven boards, a step at a doorway — while there is still time to plan for them rather than discovering them on fitting day.
Step 1: Booking the visit
Call the Peterborough team on 01733 924009 or send a message through the contact form. We will ask a few quick questions: which rooms you are thinking about, roughly what kind of flooring you have in mind (or "not sure yet" — that is a perfectly good answer), and when suits you. Our fitting and survey team works Monday to Friday, and we will find a slot that fits around work, school runs or a tenant's availability if it is a rental.
You do not need to prepare anything. You do not need to have moved furniture, cleared cupboards or decided on a colour. If you have seen a style you like online or in a magazine, have it to hand — it helps us narrow the sample selection — but it is not essential.
Step 2: What we bring with us
The single most useful thing we bring is samples. Carpet and flooring look completely different under a showroom's lighting compared with the north-facing bedroom in your house at four o'clock on a grey afternoon. Seeing a sample against your skirting, your walls and your furniture is the only reliable way to choose a colour.
Depending on what you have told us, the van will typically carry a selection from the ranges we fit most often in Peterborough homes:
- Carpet: Cormar, Westex, Ulster, Victoria, Brockway and Abingdon — from hard-wearing loop piles for hallways through to deep wool twists for bedrooms.
- Luxury vinyl tile (LVT): Karndean, Amtico, Moduleo, Quick-Step and Polyflor, in plank and tile formats, for kitchens, hallways and open-plan spaces.
- Laminate and sheet vinyl: practical options for living rooms on a budget and for bathrooms, utilities and rentals.
- Underlay: because the underlay affects how a carpet feels and how long it lasts, we bring those too so you can feel the difference.
We also bring a laser measure, a tape, a moisture meter for concrete floors, and a notepad. That is the whole kit. There is no laptop presentation and no brochure you have to sit through.
Step 3: Measuring every room properly
Measuring takes longer than most people expect, and that is deliberate. For each room we record the full width and length at several points (walls are rarely parallel), any alcoves, bay windows and chimney breasts, door thresholds and which way the doors swing, and where the room joins the next one. On stairs we count and measure every tread and riser individually, note any winders or a half-landing, and check the depth of the nosing.
All of this feeds into the cutting plan. Carpet comes on 4m and 5m rolls; LVT comes in planks and tiles of fixed sizes. Where the seams fall, how much waste there will be and whether a pattern needs matching are all worked out from the measurements — which is why a quote from a rough floor plan almost always changes once someone actually arrives to fit. If you have already measured up yourself and want a second opinion, our room measuring guide explains what we look for.
Step 4: Checking what is underneath
This is the part of the visit that separates a proper survey from a quick look. We will lift a corner of the existing carpet or check an exposed area to see what the subfloor is: floorboards, chipboard, concrete or screed. On concrete — common in Bretton, Orton Goldhay and the newer estates around Stanground South — we take a moisture reading, because LVT and laminate will fail on a floor that is still damp. On timber floors we check for movement, gaps and any boards that have lifted.
If the floor needs levelling compound, new plywood or a damp-proof membrane, we tell you at this stage and it appears as a separate line on the quote. Our guide to subfloor preparation covers what each of those jobs involves.
Step 5: Talking through the options — honestly
Once we have measured and looked at the subfloor, we can give you real advice rather than generic advice. That usually means answering questions like:
- Is carpet or LVT the better choice for this particular hallway, given the dog, the buggy and the front door opening straight onto it?
- Will a wool twist cope with a busy landing, or is an 80/20 wool-mix or a good polypropylene more sensible?
- Is it worth spending more on underlay in the bedrooms and saving on the carpet itself?
- Can the kitchen LVT run through into the utility without a threshold bar?
Sometimes the honest answer is that the cheaper option is the right one for that room. We fit both, so we have no reason to push you up a price bracket. If you are weighing up carpet against LVT more generally, our carpet fitting and luxury vinyl tile pages set out where each one works best.
Step 6: The written, itemised quote
You will receive a written quote that lists each room separately, with the flooring, the underlay, fitting, any subfloor work, door bars and thresholds, and — where relevant — uplift and disposal of the old floor. Nothing is bundled into a single mysterious figure, so you can see exactly what you are paying for and compare it line by line with any other quote you have.
To give you a sense of the ranges before we arrive, our Peterborough flooring price guide puts carpet supply and fit from around £10–£40 per square metre depending on quality, LVT from around £20–£50 per square metre, laminate from £15–£35 and sheet vinyl from £12–£30, all including fitting and standard underlay. Stairs are priced per step on top. A typical three-bedroom semi is often in the £1,200–£2,500 range for carpet throughout, but the home visit is what turns that range into an exact number for your house.
What a home visit is not
It is not a sales appointment with a deadline. We do not use "today only" prices, we do not ask you to sign anything on the day, and we do not phone repeatedly afterwards. Take the quote, sleep on it, get another one if you want to. If you decide to go ahead in a week, a month or after the kitchen is finished, the quote is there.
It is also not a mess. We are measuring and looking, not cutting or lifting anything permanently. We wear overshoes, we put things back as we found them, and a visit for a typical three-bedroom house usually takes well under an hour.
How to get the most out of the visit
A few small things make the visit more useful for you:
- Think about the whole house, even if you are only doing one room now. Knowing that you plan to do the landing next year means we can recommend a carpet that will still be available, or an LVT that will run through cleanly.
- Mention anything that has gone wrong before — a carpet that wore out quickly, a floor that squeaks, a patch that always feels cold. It usually points us at the underlying cause.
- Be honest about budget. It is not awkward; it just saves everyone time. Most of what we fit sits in the middle of the ranges above, and there is nearly always a good option at every price point.
- Ask about timing. If you need the floor down before a tenant moves in, before a house sale completes or before Christmas, tell us on the visit and we will plan around it. Our stair carpet fitting and underlay pages explain the parts of the job that most affect lead times.
Areas we cover
Home visits run Monday to Friday across Peterborough and the surrounding PE postcodes — from the city centre and Millfield in PE1, through Fletton and the Ortons in PE2, Bretton and Longthorpe in PE3, Werrington and Paston in PE4, Castor, Ailsworth and the Nene Valley villages in PE5, Eye and Thorney in PE6, and the Hamptons, Yaxley and Whittlesey in PE7. We also travel out to Huntingdon, St Neots, March, Wisbech, Ely and Stamford, and across the wider Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire border areas.
Book your free home visit
If you are anywhere near the start of a flooring project — even if you are just curious what it would cost — a free home visit is the quickest way to get a real answer. Call our Peterborough team on 01733 924009 or fill in the contact form and we will bring the samples to you, measure properly and leave you with a written quote and no pressure to decide on the spot.
Written by Daragh Giannasi. Reviewed by Omar Eddine, Founder & Head Fitter, Cambridgeshire Carpets.