It's all part of a cycle. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, floors were covered in rich houses, but as carpets got cheaper, they filtered down to the middle class and then the working class, whereupon the rich decided the hardwood or tile floor was more tasteful.
https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1465387241526599689
Late in the 19th century, broadloom carpet--aka the stuff we think of as wall to wall carpeting--was invented. If you look at rich people apartments in 1930s movies, they're all covered in broadloom.
Broadloom is quiet, warm, and gives a smooth "Modern" look to those Art Deco places. However, it was vulnerable to the same cycle: as manufacturing improved and synthetics came along, broadloom got cheap. Then it got ubiquitous. Then rich people decided it was declasse.
So in the 1970s there was a movement back to the William Morris aesthetic: hardwood floors covered by an oriental rug. Now everyone is doing variations on that theme, which possibly suggests it's time for disruption again, and another move back towards wall-to-wall textiles.
Personally I think wall-to-wall is gross, but then my mother was on the bleeding edge of the back-to-hardwoods movement way back when. Also, I have two bullmastiffs, and it's Ruggables all the way down.
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