Karndean vs Laminate

[4yearsnosleep]

We need flooring for the whole downstairs; kitchen, dining room, family room, hallway and downstairs loo. We had good quality commercial grade laminate in our old house which has been let out for 7 years and still looks like new. The other option that appeals is Karndean (dog + 4year old). What are your thoughts on each? Pros? Cons? We'd get it professionally installed whichever we choose. Thank you 😊

I hate laminate, though some of it doesn't look so naff and plastic as it used to. LVT, of which Karndean in one, is quieter underfoot, easy to clean and maintain and last really well. Look at other LVT products too. We have commercial grade LVT by Polyflor (parent company of Karndean) and it was significantly cheaper. You need a good fitter and fitting can cost more than the actual flooring.

We have a good supplier / fitter for flooring, he's done the rest of the house for us. He stocks quickstep, Karndean and Polyflor so I might just get him over with samples and lots of questions!

We have Karndean in our kitchen, it looks lovely but I wouldn't want it in the living rooms. I don't like laminate. Could you afford real wood, that looks much better? You could still do the kitchen in Karndean.
If you want to go with Karndean the head office/factory warehouse just outside Evesham is amazing, with large expanses of each type to look at and generous samples to take home to set out.

We went from Karndean to laminate. What a mistake. Laminate is tappy tappy tappy and slippy for the dog. As soon as I have the money were going back to Karndean.

Karndean is a brand, it's vinyl I think. Laminate come in lots of different styles and brands. I'd go for engineered wood, which can be cheaper avtually.

We had textured laminate in our old house so it wasn't slippy. I think really good laminate looks ok and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference. I'd never have real wood with a dog and small child as I don't want to worry about it being damaged!

It's for an open plan layout, so my plan it to have the same flooring throughout & a large rug in the living area bit. Thanks for the Karndean tip, we're not too far from Evesham so we'll definitely go have a look. I think I'm leaning towards Karndean but would like to have a good look as we've only had it in a tiny bathroom before

We have Amtico in our kitchen which I believe is similar to Karndean. My only grumble about it is that you can get tiny scratches on the surface if something like a bit of grit get dragged across it ie on the bottom a chair leg. We have fixed felt protectors on all our furniture legs to help prevent this. The plus side is that if a piece gets really damaged, it can be heated and lifted, and then replaced, so you haven't ruined the whole floor.
I do love the look and feel of it though and would choose it over laminate.

If you don't mind the look of Karndean in living areas it is the most resilient of your choices. We had engineered wood and although it looks fine now it has been down for years - sort of lived in- it was not good to discover our dogs claws left scratch marks. The odd "little accident" actually didn't cause problems, the wood looked damaged to begin with but dried out back to normal.

Karndean, we have it in 2 rooms

Our bathroom and downstairs toilet has vinyl installed from Quickstep. Their Livyn range is so strong, fully waterproof and a doddle to install. We got it from www.ambiencehardwoodflooring.co.uk in Leicester as they were much cheaper than everywhere else.

This is the flooring we have down and it looks great:

www.ambiencehardwoodflooring.co.uk/quick-step-livyn-ambient-click-black-slate-amcl40035-vinyl-flooring.html

Thank you. Love the slate quick-step!

We have Karndean in the bathroom it looks lovely. I prefer the feel of Karndean underfoot to laminate so we are now going to replace our laminate for Karndean in the hallway too. It is less slippery too, we have a springer who slides all over the place with laminate. He looks like one of those cartoon dogs who runs but doesn't get anywhere!🐶

We had Karen dean all over in a previous place and it looked lovely. Quiet and warm. Now we went from floorboards to... very light coloured carpet all over (obviously not wet areas). That's lovely as well, again quiet and warm.