If a carpet is damaged at the end of your tenancy, you almost never owe the price of a new one. Deposit adjudicators apply two rules that most tenants have never heard of, and between them they usually cut a replacement claim to a fraction of the invoice. The rules are apportionment and betterment. Here is how they work, with the arithmetic.
First question: does it actually need replacing?
Most carpets that look ruined at a check-out are not. Flattened pile in a doorway, general greying down the middle of a hallway and the dulling you get from four years of shoes are all things a professional machine lifts. Nearly half the end of tenancy cleans we take on include the carpets, and the majority of those come back looking like carpet again.
What does not come out is a different list. Cigarette burns and iron scorches have melted the fibre, so there is nothing to lift. Bleach and some cleaning products have stripped the dye, and colour does not come back. Pet urine that has soaked through into the underlay will keep coming back as a smell no matter what happens to the surface. Old dye transfer from a rug backing is usually permanent too.
That distinction matters commercially, because a clean is tens of pounds and a replacement is hundreds. If a landlord jumps straight to replacement without trying a clean, that is worth saying in writing.
What is fair wear and tear on a carpet?
Fair wear and tear is the deterioration you would expect from normal use over the length of the tenancy, judged against how many people lived there and for how long. You cannot be charged for it. A traffic path worn into a hallway carpet over three years is wear. A wine stain in the middle of the living room is not. Nor is a burn.
The line is about cause rather than appearance. Two carpets can look equally tired while only one of them is your responsibility.
Apportionment: why a landlord cannot charge you for a new carpet
A carpet does not last forever, and it was already partly used up when you moved in. If it has to be replaced, the landlord is entitled to the value of the life you took off it, not the value of a brand new one. That is apportionment, and it is the rule that does most of the work.
The other half is betterment: a landlord is not allowed to end up better off than they were before. A new carpet in place of a seven-year-old one leaves them with an asset worth more than the one they lost, so the schemes will not award it.
The deposit schemes publish average useful lifespans to work this out, prepared with input from RICS and ARLA. A mid-range carpet is generally taken to last around ten years. A cheap one can be as little as four, which cuts both ways: a budget carpet reaches the end of its life quickly, so there is little value left to charge you for.
The arithmetic, worked through
Take a living room carpet that cost £600 to fit, has an expected life of ten years, and is seven years old when you move out. You have damaged it beyond cleaning.
| Step | Figure |
|---|---|
| Cost of the carpet when new | £600 |
| Expected useful life | 10 years |
| Age when the tenancy ended | 7 years |
| Life remaining that you took | 3 years |
| Reasonable claim: £600 × 3 ÷ 10 | £180 |
So the invoice says £600 and the defensible claim is £180. If the deduction proposed to you is the invoice figure, that is the gap to argue about. Ask two questions in writing: how old is the carpet, and what did it cost. A landlord who cannot answer either is going to struggle at adjudication.
One more thing gets missed. If only one room is damaged, you owe for one room. Replacing carpet throughout so it matches is the landlord’s choice, and their cost.
What to do if you are facing a replacement claim
Photograph the carpet before you hand the keys back, close up and wide, with something beside any mark for scale. Our check-out evidence pack lists the shots that matter. Ask for the age and original cost of the carpet, and for the invoice behind any quote. Then check whether the sum they have proposed reflects the remaining life or the full replacement, because it is frequently the latter.
If it comes to it, the dispute letter generator writes the letter, and the deduction checker covers the cleaning side of the same argument. If the carpet is dirty rather than damaged, a professional clean is the cheaper answer for everybody: our cost calculator will price it.
None of this is legal advice, and adjudicators decide each case on its own evidence. The arithmetic above is simply the method the schemes use, so it is worth knowing before you accept a number.