Does building insurance cover carpets?

If you’re a homeowner, you’ll probably have buildings and contents insurance for your property. You might either have these as separate policies or you could have one combined policy for both types of insurance. Either way, it’s important to make sure you’re covered in the event of an accident so you’ll be able to make a claim.

But if something goes wrong with one of your carpets, would you know which policy to make claim on – buildings or contents insurance? Let’s find out how you could make a claim.

Not sure if you need buildings and contents insurance? Find out the difference in our helpful blog.

Contents or building

As a general rule, buildings insurance covers the bricks and mortar or your house and everything else related to the structure. This includes the doors and the windows and any other permanent fixtures. If you’re not sure what comes under buildings insurance, think about what you’d take with you if you were to move out of the property. If you’d leave it behind because it’s fixed down, it probably counts as something buildings insurance would cover.

Contents insurance covers all of your belongings – your valuables, your beds and all other furniture. When you move out of the property, you’d take all of these with you, so they’re classed as your ‘contents’.

By this reasoning, you’d probably assume that your carpets would be covered under buildings insurance – after all, they’re nailed down. In fact, carpets generally come under contents insurance policies, though this isn’t always the case. It’s important to know this when you’re working out how much contents cover you need, especially if your carpets were quite expensive. You don’t want to risk being under-insured and then when you come to make a claim, find out that you don’t have enough cover.

It’s worth checking with your insurer to find out for sure whether your carpets are covered by your buildings or contents insurance, as policies can vary.

Claiming for carpet

If you’ve had a carpet-related mishap when you were painting your room or if you’ve dropped the iron on the floor and it’s left a big hole, it’s likely that you’ll want to make a claim on your insurance for this.

As we’ve mentioned, in most cases you’ll have to go through your contents insurance policy for this but it’s worth checking the details before you do this, as in a few situations your carpets may be covered by your buildings insurance instead. If you’ve got a combined policy for buildings and contents, this shouldn’t be a problem. The only difficulty might come if your buildings and your contents insurance policies are with different insurers as you could have to act as a ‘go-between’ for the two insurers.

To be able to claim for anything that’s gone wrong with your carpet by accident, you’ll need ‘accidental damage’ on your policy. You may have to pay extra for this in some circumstances so if you’re planning to make a claim, check your policy details to see if you’re covered for this.