There’s a bathroom in the exclusive beach enclave of Southampton, N.Y. with fluffy wall-to-wall carpeting that abuts every leak-prone fixture from the toilet to bathtub. Further increasing the danger quotient is the fact that this carpet is a snowy shade of white.

The bathroom in question can be found in the primary summer home of the socialite Lauren Santo Domingo and her husband, Andres. Ms. Santo Domingo’s unorthodox choice was featured in Vogue magazine in 2019, and was just the start of a broader global trend among the wealthy to invest in precious carpets that are permanently installed from the seam of one wall to the next.

The look is catching on in rarefied homes such as Alpine ski chalets and sprawling Manhattan condominiums. Unlike the orange nylon shag carpets of the 1970s, or the concrete gray high-pile twists common of American rental apartments, today’s haute wall-to-wall carpets are made of natural materials like silk, mohair and merino wool in nuanced colors and can cost tens of thousands of dollars per room to install.

The trend not only defies what many Americans consider chic, but also what is widely seen as hygienic and easy-to-clean. In an email to The New York Times, Ms. Santo Domingo seemed unconcerned by the assertion that her bathroom could be considered dirty. “I’m a ‘shoes-on’ household kind of person, so I live with a high tolerance for all types of calamities,” said Ms. Santo Domingo, who is a co-founder of the online shopping platform Moda Operandi as well as the artistic director for home goods at Tiffany & Company.

In a housing design market saturated with hardwood and gray laminate floors, interior designers say that wall-to-wall carpeting offers a fresh wash of color or texture that can transform a space. Some say that because wall-to-wall is so outdated, its use can even lend an effect of irony or humor.

Experts also claim these carpets are worlds apart from the mass-made industrial “broadloom” that gave wall-to-wall carpet its cheap reputation. Patterson Flynn, a high-end carpet company based in New York City, regularly receives bespoke orders priced between $40,000 to $65,000 to carpet a single room, with some carpeting made from unconventional materials like multicolor stonewashed silk. “It has a very artisanal construction” said Pam Marshall, the company’s creative director.

At Stark, another carpet company in Manhattan, sales of wall-to-wall carpet are up by approximately 20 percent in the last 18 months, with an even greater uptick noted for carpets made from luxury materials like cashmere, according to Amy Conlon, vice president of product development for Stark’s broadloom division.

In the United States, early adopters of wall-to-wall carpet’s fashionable return are primarily clustered in Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago, where experts say that homeowners are gravitating toward carpets in shades like spruce green, light blue and bright red.

In Europe, which does not share America’s culture of carpeted rental apartments, soft beiges and grays are most popular. Fluffy wool floors in the tone of Bordeaux wine are in demand with the residents of luxury ski towns across the Alps. “With the wood of the chalet it’s very nice,” said Julien Baruzzo, the artistic director of the Paris-based brand Carpet Society, which has recently sold wall-to-wall carpeting to homes in places like St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Courchevel, France.

The trend is not without some detractors. Designers say that presenting clients with the option of wall-to-wall carpeting can provoke heated conversations. “Most people are not into it, it takes a lot of convincing — they can think it’s gross,” said Pali Xisto Cornelsen, an interior and furniture designer based in Los Angeles and New York City.

The designer Adam Charlap Hyman, a founder of the design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, said he has installed wall-to-wall carpet in about a dozen homes, but has received an equal number of rejections. He said he continues to recommend wall-to-wall because of how it can expand and distort one’s sense of space and can make a room appear “dipped” in color.

Mr. Charlap Hyman is among the designers pushing the boundaries of what wall-to-wall carpeting can look like. He’s played with trompe l’oeil shadows for an art installation and has blanketed not only the floors, but also the walls and ceilings of a client’s home in cut antique rugs for an enveloping effect.

He’s now experimenting with allover floral patterns that make floors look like a woolly garden — similar to the wall-to-wall carpets seen in a Brooklyn townhouse owned by the singer Lily Allen and her estranged husband, the actor David Harbour, which was recently listed for just under $8 million.

While it’s often an uphill battle to get clients to agree to wall-to-wall carpet, Mr. Cornelsen said that none have regretted it once it is installed, and many are surprised to find it easier to maintain than expected — particularly with wool rugs, which are naturally stain resistant.

Mr. Cornelsen believes in the look so much that he installed scarlet red wall-to-wall carpet in his family’s Los Angeles living room, along with matching curtains, making him, as well as Ms. Santo Domingo, part of a growing group of individuals with roots in the high design world who are living with (and loving) wall-to-wall carpet.

The creative director Omar Sosa has installed the carpeting in a handful of his most recent apartments both in Barcelona and New York City. He said he loves how the carpet plays on his senses: its fuzziness under bare feet, its warmth in sunlight and the way it can soundproof a space.

One thing Mr. Sosa does not like, however, is the carpet’s effect on those around him. At one point, an employee of his studio dropped a coffee on the carpet and joked that it might get him fired, Mr. Sosa said. Another time, Mr. Sosa’s visitor brought a dog to his office that got sick on the carpeted floor. Both times, Mr. Sosa said he was able to clean the carpet without major issue.

He is, however, preparing to move to a new home in Barcelona and plans to only carpet the private quarters of his living space to save his guests further anxiety. Otherwise, Mr. Sosa said, “you are always a bit on edge when you have a party.”