New flooring for our house - Laminate vs Other

gazfocus

Our new house currently has a maple Karndean flooring covering the entire downstairs (Living Room/Kitchen/Dining Room/Study/Conservatory). It goes diagnolly and has a border round each room and I absolutely hate it.

We would like to replace the floor in the entire house but money is a bit tight. In our old house we had J2 flooring in the conservatory and kitchen and we liked that but it's quite expensive at approx £20-£25/sqm, which I now realise is about the same price as some real wood floors.

I have heard that Quick Step Laminate flooring is quite good at approx £14/sqm but I'm not sure as I've never really been a fan of laminate flooring (only lived in rental houses with is so probably cheap rubbish).

So, if doing the entire downstairs (perhaps one room at a time), would you go for, bearing in mind this will be in the kitchen as well:

a) J2 Flooring (luxery vinyl)
b) Quick Step Laminate Flooring
c) Engineered Wood Flooring
d) Save up and get Real Wood Flooring

andrewf75

I'm doing almost exactly the same and I'm almost certainly going to go for engineered wood. It might not be solid wood but it is real, i.e. the top layer that you see and walk on IS real wood, not something that is pretending to be wood. As good as some laminate looks I can't get away from the fact that its something pretending to be something else.

The only bit I'm not doing is the living room, which I'm going to have carpet in.

gazfocus

andrewf75 wrote: »

I'm doing almost exactly the same and I'm almost certainly going to go for engineered wood. It might not be solid wood but it is real, i.e. the top layer that you see and walk on IS real wood, not something that is pretending to be wood. As good as some laminate looks I can't get away from the fact that its something pretending to be something else.

The only bit I'm not doing is the living room, which I'm going to have carpet in.

Thanks - I was leaning towards engineered wood myself but am I bit worried that engineered wood may eventually peel. Although, I guess the only way to avoid that is by having real wood flooring which I can't afford.

Is there a particular brand or specification I should look out for?

andrewf75

Never heard of it peeling. I think it can get marked and scratched and obviously because its only a few milimetres of real wood, you can only sand it so many times. Not going to last forever, but it will surely last as long as you live in a particular house!

I'm still researching myself so not sure about brands and spec. I'm looking at the lower price range stuff (approx £25 per sqm) a lot of the internet places send free samples. I've just ordered a free sample of this
http://www.woodandbeyond.com/products/Natural-Engineered-Oak-Flooring-Oiled-14%7B47%7D3mm-By-150mm.html

Hintza

Real wood flooring has more potential to cause problems with possible warping.

There are some very good engineered boards out there, choose carefully and it should last a lifetime.

We have 22mm engineered Oak (floating) as knotty as I could find as I wanted character but mainly when the inevitable scrapes and bumps happen they will not be as obvious. Ours takes a daily battering with kids and dogs etc.

I prefer an oiled board as it is easier to sort in hard wearing areas compared to a lacquered board but I think lacquer will last a bit longer.

gazfocus

Thanks andrew. To be honest, I'm looking at a max of £20/sqm if I can, but then again, I want something that's going to last (and we have 4 dogs) so will take some battering.

Hintza wrote: »

Real wood flooring has more potential to cause problems with possible warping.

There are some very good engineered boards out there, choose carefully and it should last a lifetime.

We have 22mm engineered Oak (floating) as knotty as I could find as I wanted character but mainly when the inevitable scrapes and bumps happen they will not be as obvious. Ours takes a daily battering with kids and dogs etc.

I prefer an oiled board as it is easier to sort in hard wearing areas compared to a lacquered board but I think lacquer will last a bit longer.

Could you link to what you've got? Thanks

andyhop

The engineered matt lacquered I have from kahrs is not the best if you have a active dog. Only a few months old and he is now banned from most of the house due to the scratches!!

Polyflor camaro is priced well but is a vinyl tile similar to the karndean

Hintza

gazfocus wrote: »

Could you link to what you've got? Thanks

For the life of me I can't remember.

I drove the shop mad and took about a year to choose exactly what I wanted. It was a German board made by their factory in China with decent ply and decent glue (most Chinese boards use poor quality glue) I think we paid about £33/m2 a couple of years ago which wasn't bad as most were quoting over £50/m2.

Whatever you do take your time, not sure I would be switching from Karndean in a hurry it is very good stuff (we have it in the bathrooms).

phoebe1989seb

We also have Karndean in two of our bathrooms here and having had it previously in bathrooms in our old houses we have been very happy with it. That said, I'm really not a fan of any diagonally laid flooring so understand your wish to replace it

We're laying engineered oak in our three reception areas - around 65 sq m - and were advised against solid wood because ours is an old stone house - 200+ years - and as such prone to damp issues which would not be compatible with solid timber.

Ours cost £59.99 per sq m, but over a period of two years (:eek:) I obtained about thirty samples ranging in price from £25 to £90 per sq m and tbh some of the less expensive stuff seemed fairly good quality, just that for us colour and aged appearance were important and the one we've gone with happened to meet our criteria.....some of the engineered boards we considered were more expensive than solid oak......in fact the oak board I would have picked for colour etc was half the price of the engineered one we ended up going with!

Kernel_Sanders

Please don't tell me the OP is considering replacing real wood simply because it runs diagonally!

phoebe1989seb

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

Please don't tell me the OP is considering replacing real wood simply because it runs diagonally!

No, it's Karndean