Pulling the rug on Axminster carpets In fact, we can date the toppling of carpet very specifically to 1996. This was the year when Ikea ran its hugely successful "Chuck out your chintz" advertising campaign, which tapped into the desire of young couples and students to abandon the heavy furniture and shagpiles of their parents" generation and pretend to live in stylish loft conversions in Stockholm. It was also the year that Britain came face to face with Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, a one-man tsunami of rag-rolled walls, MDF headboards and vinyl flooring. His show, Changing Rooms was the culmination of three decades of DIY programmes, but it was the first that taught consumers that they could simply rip up their carpets and replace them with wipe-clean laminate. It was a cheap, fast-track route to modernity. The sort of gimmick that saw Tony Blair invite Noel Gallagher to No 10 the following year. How cool it all seemed back then; how tacky and Pinot-Grigio-stained it all seems now. At the start of the Changing Rooms era, £8 in every £10 we spent on our floors was invested in carpets. Now it is not much over £5. The rest is on vinyl, wood and ceramic tiles, says AMA. Every single room in my childhood home - save the 1970s cork tiles in the kitchen - was covered in carpet. But it is not just our continental preferences that have done for the industry. It is the cold realities of the recession, and, more specifically, the moribund state of the housing market. In the golden years before Northern Rock, there were about 1.7 million homes bought and sold each year. Last year it was about 930,000. That is three-quarters of a million fewer families moving home, and three-quarters of a million fewer families replacing the tired old Wilton Royal with a bit of oatmeal sisal when they move in. More than anything, however, Axminster is to blame for its own troubles. First, its carpets were costly. Michael Coddington, a partner at Wells Carpet, a shop in the Devon town of Axminster itself, says: "You have to sell what people want to buy. Axminster carpets were beautiful quality but they were just too expensive. A woven Axminster, designed to last a generation, sells for about £60 a square metre. This means that with the price of underlay, it can cost £1,500 to fit a modest-sized sitting room. Carpetright could sort you out for about £300. Plus, Axminster made its name with intricately patterned designs that don't appeal to today's buyers. Its current range includes Versailles, Magnificant and Antique Splendour - fussy, swirly, care-home chic as stylish as a pair of corduroy slippers. Mr Coddington says: "The only people who bought Axminsters were very old, in their eighties. Axminster's customers are quite literally dying out. When the economy finally bounces back, though, carpets could well rise again. Many people have realised that laminate floors are naff, and wooden floors, while stylish, are draughty, echoey and dirty in winter. Covering your floor in the wool of England is a warm, ecologically friendly, comforting option. Sadly, that will be too late for Axminster, a company that was not just a few years behind the times, but about half a century.