Karndean vs engineered wood - help!

[hannah1122]

We can’t decide between using Karndean throughout our bungalow (other than bathrooms), or using tiles in the kitchen diner, then engineered wood in the hallway, living room and bedrooms.

We’ve never had Karndean or engineered wood before but need to switch to a hard floor due to allergies. Please help me decide! Would be great to hear the pros and cons of each :)

We’ve got engineered wood in our family room and kitchen too, just to add a third option.
I prefer real wood, so that ruled out karndean for us, it just feels plastic underfoot to me.

Thanks 4PawsGood, is the engineered wood slippery in the family room? I don’t think we’d look after it well enough to have it in the kitchen, would be too worried about the kids dropping water etc ... or me dropping water!!

Karndean pros:

Quiet
Soft underfoot
No maintenance
Easy to clean

Karndean Cons
It is very hard-wearing but can still get damaged (don't drop your kettle spout down on it!)
Wood can look nicer (as long as it is maintained)

I've just spent months agonising over this, and have eventually gone for Amtico as I preferred it to the karndean options, and kept getting told, by people who sell both engineered wood and lvt, it would be best not to have wood in the hallway. Its not fitted yet, so I'm a bit nervous to see how it looks!

I've got karndean all the way through, it looks OK but I wish I'd gone for tiles in the kitchen and engineered wood everywhere else.

@theliverpoolone I’m sure it will look great - we haven’t even looked at Amtico, maybe we should ... although I should be narrowing down the options rather than increasing them!!

@rosesarered321 thanks, that was our original plan but then we’re getting lured into the idea that Karndean would be much less effort!

I have both!!....go for the engineered wood, the karndean has aged badly!!!

It is less effort to clean, but honestly it just doesn't look as nice as wood would. It's very hard wearing, no problems with scratches at all.

@Blinkingbotheration odd question - which do you find the least slippery to walk on? Also, does the engineered wood get scratched easily .... kids playing with toy cars etc?

@hannah1122

Thanks 4PawsGood, is the engineered wood slippery in the family room? I don’t think we’d look after it well enough to have it in the kitchen, would be too worried about the kids dropping water etc ... or me dropping water!!

Our second greyhound struggles but the rest of us are fine.

I drop water on it all the time. Just wipe it up. There are no marks on it. Children trudge in through the back door with muddy boots on etc. There are door mats but they often miss them.

Oh and it’s easy enough to clean with a steam mop.

Having the same dilemma! Coming down on the side of wood as I just can’t bring myself to put down vinyl, however expensive it is. Complicating matters is that we’ll be open plan though - has anyone dealt with a sort of threshold between tiles to engineered wood from the kitchen area to the dining area?

@Lou573 we were thinking to have tiles throughout the kitchen and dining room as it’s open plan. But maybe then the dining room will feel like it’s part of the kitchen .... watching for any ideas about a threshold as maybe that would be better ....

@hannah1122 in a previous home we had a wooden lip between tiles and the original floorboards, but it was only a couple metres long off the end of the kitchen peninsula which acted like a divider.

In this one it will be a larger threshold and if we tiled throughout it would be an enormous tiled area as there’s a living area attached as well.

We've just moved into a flat that has LVT in two of the bathrooms, and honestly it's a bit nasty.

It is landlord-spec boggo stuff though, so possibly not the high-end brands you're all talking about!

If you drink heavily and then squint in a low light it kind of looks like porcelain tile/wood (there's one of each finish in each respective bathroom), but it has that unpleasant vinyl flex when you walk on it.

We had engineered wood in hallways and living areas in our last two flats and never had any problems. I just vacuumed it once a week and mopped it with Method wood floor cleaner. It looked virtually brand new when we moved out (after five years) although we don't have kids or pets so that maybe made a difference.

I'm looking at floors too. I was coming down on the side of LVT, partly because of the difficulty of removing skirting boards, which I think would be a hassle and more expensive. I also have a small flat with a particular 'track' from the door to the desk where I spend most of my time, and I worried that it would look worn more quickly, as I read that engineered wood can start to wear unevenly (no idea how true that is!). I also have open plan and was thinking that the same floor everywhere might look more spacious, and I wasn't so sure about having engineered wood in the bathroom or kitchen area.

I preferred the Amtico I saw to Karndean. One of the shops really rated Quickstep.

I'm not totally sure on this, but I think it's possible to replace small amounts of LVT if it gets stained/dented, but that is harder with engineered wood? (of course, no idea how easy it is to actually get a company out to replace one tile!)

@Lou573 that’s a good point, we also have a small peninsular acting as a kind of divider so the threshold would only be across about a metre

@AlmondFlat my friend has Karndean and it seemed the process for removing and replacing a damaged plank works well - she had it done and was happy with it

In general which is more slippery, Karndean or engineered wood?

Also, is one noisier than the other - kids running around etc?

Thanks for all your comments!

I used to sell flooring
Karndean 100% over engineered flooring.
Although Karndean is hard on the feet so I tend to wear slippers to prevent aching feet.

Wood & Amtico in the kitchen.

We have Karndean in the kitchen/utility room (we’re messy cooks DC is a chef and seems to be under the impression that a meal is only any good if you chuck food far and wide) and oak floor boards in the dinning room/living room and bedrooms.
Karndean is very quiet and very easy to look after it’s quiet to walk on. I think you have to choose the colour/style carefully ours looks like wood in fact most people think it is wood. The shop recommended the one we put down said it was the most popular we then looked at lots of other samples and then chose the recommended one it’s a very safe choice. A friend put a different colour/style down it looks like plastic wood/posh lino.
The wooden floor looks fab but it does scuff. I would say the wood is slightly more slippery.

We have engineered wood (bamboo) throughout our open plan downstairs. I love it - it's been down 11 years and we haven't had to do anything to it at all. It looks great, and feels lovely under foot.

I much prefer it to tiles in the kitchen, and I'd definitely try and avoid having a join of different floor types if you can.

We have Karndean throughout our downstairs. It’s a distressed wood effect and still looks very good. However it has scratched a lot in the kitchen and has faded in the sun by the bifold doors. I am very clumsy so would definitely have cracked several tiles by now if we had those instead.