Wooden floors. What do you wish someone had said?

[TomNook]

My qs:
How much to spend
What colour you wish you’d had
How do they do doorways
What happens with skirting boards

I can't stand wooden/laminate floor boards. I don't understand this fashion for them in anywhere but the kitchen or bathroom or utility.

Wood? The most original flooring? How odd

Thanks for your help though

I can't stand carpets. So unhygienic and full of dust, mites and allergens. Wood floors are great! However I've no experience of installing them, only inheriting them. Hope you find the answers OP! Xx

I've always had carpet recently switched to laminate and I love it, so much easier. Cost me about £120 for the room and have some left over to go through to hallway.

Get decent slippers cos your feet will be cold?

Previous owners put wooden floors in throughout downstairs. I wish someone told them not to ...

We carpeted over the living room, left the hall and kitchen. Endless bloody dust bunnies, carpet is a lot more forgiving.

If you are getting engineered, they scratch. The scrathes look paler than the wood. But actually, after a while you dont notice them. Water stains them, so clear it up fast. And think about 'fashions'.... Pale/whitish and parquet. Beautiful now, but may not age so well. We got a more traditional oak. So happy with it. Elka truffle oak. Really really nice.

They are cold and complete dust collectors

And for dust bunnys. Get an eufy. Unbelievable! Best buy ever.
Carpet - yack. The dirt is still there.... Just hidden. But you are breathing it in and the mites are feasting on it.

Having gone from lovely wooden floorboards to carpet, with a five year old and one year old, I don't understand why anyone would ever get carpet downstairs. It's horrendous. It smells and is covered in stains. At least when we had floorboards we could wipe it up.

Very. Weird. Responses.

Doorways they go straight through, or if you're joining on to carpet in another room you have a wooden bar that goes across the doorway.

I wish I'd realised that they can get very dusty under furniture!

Under furniture - get an eufy.

They are not cold and they are not dust collectors. The dust is easy to hoover up, and then a wipe with anti bac cloth and you have a clean hygienic allergen free floor. I can't stand dusty manky filthy carpets

Underfloor heating takes ages to warm the room up if you have wood floor. So be prepared to have the heating on 24/7 (albeit low ish) in winters

I don't understand this fashion

I think they're beyond fashion now.

Spend- Calculate how many sq ms you need to cover and then it’s usually sold with the £/sq m noted on the box so you can price compare.

Colour- I have a light, natural colour and am very happy with it

Doorways- a good fitter should be able to run the flooring through a doorway with no interruption/break. It’s not that hard too if you DIY.

Skirting boards- you take them off before laying the wood floor and then hammer them back on afterwards unless you feel like replacing them.

I would get laminate I think, it's very good these days. Or those ones you click together. looks despairingly at stinky carpet*

Get the skirting taken off and put the wood down, then skirting back on. Or if renovating, don’t put skirting on until the floor is down. Beading along the skirting board to hide the join is ugly and should be avoided if at all possible.

I LOVE dark wood floors and got dark engineered wood. I really really really wish we’d gone for an oak colour instead.
And I agree with the other poster that said engineered wood scratches. Get solid wood if you can.

If you have it in your hall, you can have an integrated doormat which is handy.

People used to be embarrassed to have bare floor boards in their house. They were so proud of having fitted carpets.

Why have people gone back to cold hard slippery bare floors ?

What's that about ?

It defies belief in a country like this where the winters are cold.

Spend as much or as little as you want to - we had Ikea laminate in our first flat for £££ and engineered wood in our house now for ££££ I preferred the laminate! Although the engineered wood has been more hard wearing.
We had traditional oak first time round and dark wood this time. I HATE the dark wood. You can see every single speck of dust, even straight after hoovering. It kills me.
First time we didn’t take skirting off, second time we did. It looks marginally better now but was an absolute pain in the arse and we had no skirting for ages because DH couldn’t get it back on.
First time we had thresholds in doorways, this time it runs right through, which is much better.

Get real wood. Scratches just make it look weathered. Scratched laminate is ... broken. You can eventually get it resanded or just sand the bit that is problematic .

I just wish we had not got the wood with the grooves in between the boards, but instead a flat join.

That is my only regret.

Also. If you have other real wood, don’t try and do matchy matchy. too much of the same wood won’t look good.

It’s very noisy upstairs!

Take skirting boards off, don't do the edge strip thing

Choose one that has one plank of wood per plank not three strip (gaps open up between the planks in dry weather- looks better if they look like are supposed to be there

Oiled surface is easy to refinished if scratched, lacquered is a nightmare

Definitely run straight through doors, don't do threshold strip