“I’m going to put laminate flooring throughout my whole apartment.”
STOP.
Who would think you need to even give this a second thought? But you do.
Leases for apartments can have instructions in them about what floor coverings to use and in what rooms. There are good reasons for this, but the main one is to stop noise transfer to the apartment below. Often, you will find the lease won’t have any guidance on this but you still need to speak to the managing agent to make sure.
Imagine, you fit your whole apartment with hard flooring and it looks great. Suddenly, the apartment below complains about noise. If this happens, you could be made to completely remove the lovely hardwood floor and revert back to carpet!
These rules will often allow you to have a hard floor in the bathroom and kitchen. This clearly makes sense as a carpet could be impractical. The landlord or agent may be able to simply give permission or it may require more input. In some leases, it’s a straightforward ‘no’ to hard floors and in this case, there is no way around the clause and you have to have carpet.
Be safe and always check before you go ahead with changing the flooring. One phone call could save you loads of trouble… and money.
