Maybe I was just lucky and my kitties were very good about listening to me.
I'm sure it helped that I started when they were still kittens. I trimmed the front nails, too, but that didn't really stop any "damage" -- the scratching posts did.
I didn't really play around with different textures to see what they'd like. I went with sissal because I was concerned that if it was say, carpet, they would think it was ok to scratch ANY carpet. They were perfectly fine with sissal. The only area of carpet that got beat up a bit was the landing at the foot of my stairs, and that was because they had a tendency to launch themselves up the stairs from the landing at top speed.
So I threw a small, cheap area rug over the landing and problem solved. I didn't care if the little rug got ripped up, they had a "launch pad" and the carpet underneath was saved.
Really, it's not rocket science. It just takes a little thinking and effort. But I guess some people just don't want to do either?