Sales decreased by 3.3% during the 12 weeks to July 20 at Carpetright, with like-for-likes dropping 1.9% due to warm weather impacting footfall.
UK store numbers dropped by five to 473, of which 202 have now been modernised. Like-for-likes across the rest of Europe, comprising Belgium, Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland, fell by 10.6%, with total sales down by 10.9%. After the impact of currency movements this translates to a 4.4% drop, with the key driver of performance continuing to be "weaknesses in the Netherlands economy."

Chief executive Darren Shapland said: "We saw solid growth in UK sales during May and June, reflecting the continued progress of our self-help activities. During July this positive trend was reversed by the significantly warmer weather, with the decline being compounded by a period of strong, wet weather assisted comparatives in 2012 during which retail like-for-likes grew by 5.3%.

"Excluding the expected decrease in sales from the wholesale business during the 12 week period, our core retail business would have reported a like-for-like sales decline of 1.0%.

"Trading in our rest of Europe business continues to be dominated by the extremely difficult economic conditions in the Netherlands.

"Notwithstanding the tough trading conditions we believe we continue to grow market share in all of our markets and continue to see significant further potential in our planned self-help initiatives."