...to ask for your advice/experience of different types of flooring?

[caroloro]

We're having our house renovated and I'm clueless. My thoughts are currently with flooring. We don't have an endless budget and want to balance niceness/practicality/cost. Help me out!

The space in question is kitchen/dining/living area...will be about 50m2 in all.

We’ve had various options in our kitchen/dining room in different houses...
cushion vinyl was the cheapest and easiest to clean. Felt nice underfoot. But it was wood effect or tile effect and you could tell it was fake, it looked cheap. I also found if you dropped anything hard on it the floor would get dented.
Laminate- also felt nice, easy to clean, reasonable price. But we’ve had issues with water getting into the joins and making the laminate swell.
Tiles- hard and unforgiving, cold underfoot but easy to clean and withstood water/spills in the kitchen well. Cheap to buy but you need to factor in labour as I wouldn’t fancy doing it myself.
Karndean- which was my favourite. Looked more like real wood than the cheaper vinyl, withstood spills, could be scrubbed, less likely to get marked than the vinyl. But again, need to factor in fitting cost.
I’m assuming you wouldn’t want carpet in a kitchen!

We had lino in our kitchen when we moved in and found it got ripped to shreds when we moved our oven out to clean behind it. We now have tiles which as pp said can be cold but are so easy to clean and do look really good. I'm not often on them barefoot anyway so it's not a massive concern of mine but as with everything it depends on your lifestyle.

Kitchen needs tiles/lino, not wood/laminate, the wood/laminate will get wet and start to lift, for the other areas go for wood or wood veneer, bamboo is very hard wearing. I had wood veneer (a 5mm section/slice of wood on mdf backing), we currently have laminate flooring in the house we moved into 3 years ago, it's crap by comparison. The wood is warmer, harder wearing, and looks far superior. I bought mine in topps tiles for less than laminate from B&Q. If by chance you dent/scuff or damage the wood veneer you can lightly sand and varnish the damaged area.

My flooring in my previous house was laid ten years prior to moving, and not an inch of damage, even with two dc, lego/cars/toy buggies/walkers etc! The only thing you must avoid is stiletto heels.

For lino look at John Lewis, their range is amazing quality and very good value.

no wood or laminate in wet areas - wood gets water ingress which rots it over time and makes it go black, even when varnished. Laminate swells, even the grade 4 stuff.

Tiles with underfloor heating would be my go -to for kitchens, or LVT (luxury vynl tiles such as amtico or karndean but generics are pretty good now) would be my second choice. Lino for cheap.

Thanks all. I'm thinking along the lines of tiles vs laminate tiles vs karndean type vinyl tiles.

The cost of installation is a significant consideration too. I'm thinking the sorts of flooring that click together?

I would also recommend Karndean, Polyflor is another brand. You need a good fitter though. It looks great, is hard wearing, warm and quiet to walk on.
Laminate is ok in halls but noisy, cold and can warp in damp places.
Tiles are cold, expensive and need a rocksolid subfloor.