If you have young kids, I'd put carpet. We recently put carpet as our then 3 year old fell down the stairs backwards on her back. Thankfully nothing but bruised back and broken collar bone - have little boy now who is complete terror so if anyone is going to go down them he will...we opted for carpet to cushion his fall in that event! Otherwise we lived with varnished wooden stairs (original in house) for 10 years, I thought they were great, easy to sweep clean of dog hairs etc, a bit noisy but then again we've wood downstairs too, so you'd hardly notice...you get used to clompy feet sounds. We only varnished them once in 1997....so low maintenance. Carpet does look a little more 'finished' and plush I suppose, we went for grey/brown type carpet so you hardly see the dirt. Also we take shoes off at the bottom step. Never heard of put n stairs.