Flooring advice please

[purpleporpoise]

We're planning to extend our house in 2017 and this will include increasing the size of the existing kitchen, plus adding a utility room and playroom.
For ease I would prefer to use the same flooring throughout but it can have door strips to divide the rooms.
We're on a very tight budget so we've been to carpetright today and seen some cushioned vinyl which seemed like a good idea.

Anyone got any experience of this? Whatever we get would have to be fitted for us as we have zero skills! I had laminate in a previous kitchen and it was fine for a whole but water did get in and it lifted the top layer

[BillyShingles]

There are some lovely newer vinyls out there now. We've just been shopping for laminate for a living room and we both were eyeing up the vinyl for our next bathroom floor. The big advantages are it's easy, and therefore cheap, to fit (and that can be a significant saving) and it tends to stand up well to water.

I'd go as thick as you can afford as chair legs scraping can wear it over time.

Our nursery, as in childcare, had really thick underlay under vinyl and it was perfect bouncy, easy clean flooring for toddlers. The fake wood effect wasn't the least convincing as it felt much softer. I tend to prefer the plainer patterns that vaguely resemble marmoleum, over wood or most tile effects, myself.