Recommend your LVP (Luxury Vinyl Plank) or Engineered Wood flooring

[AquaLeader]

I'm looking for recommendations for LVP (Luxury Vinyl Plank) or Engineered Wood flooring for a large kitchen and living room.

Ideally, a flooring that looks and feels like real wood.

I have engineered wood in my dining room, it looks beautiful, indistinguishable from solid wood. However I am not sure how robust it would be for a kitchen. It does mark easily

I looked at various samples including the well-known brands and the most plausible wood-looking one was QuickStep. My cleaner thought it was real wood and got really worried thinking it was going to get water damage if I didn't oil it.

In a previous house I had Karndean and everyone visiting all thought it was real wood, everyone. I was quite surprised. Have also had engineered wood and didn't think they were similar at all.

I have Polyflor in my flat.

Everywhere except one bedroom. It seems good. Non shiny and warm to walk on.
Had it 5 years and still in excellent condition. I chose a variegated colour so it looks fairly real.

Thank you so much.

We have Karndean in spring oak from the art select range. Really happy with it and it’s so low maintenance.

I have both LVT (Karnedean and Amtico) and engineered wood. For a kitchen, I'd go higher end Karndean over engineered wood (and also have it in teenage DC's bedrooms (with rugs) because nail varnish and spilt drinks and fake tan just wipe straight off) - I once dropped a can of paint on my karndean floor and it wiped off. Engineered wood does objectively look better/ more real but LVT still looks good, is just a lot more hard wearing and if it scratches badly it's easier to just replace those bits. Engineered wood is a lot more expensive if you want a decent wear layer/ quality and I don't think the cheaper stuff looks a lot better than higher end LVT.

I was prepared to go for Amtico or another LVT for our kitchen, utility, downstairs loo and hallway. We ended up going with Quikstep because I thought it looked more like real wood, it’s waterproof and it was cheaper. People come to ours and assume it’s real wood we’ve had lots of compliments on it. Not cheap or plastic looking, not too cold underfoot either. I may be wrong but I believe the people in the flooring shop said it is actually a thin layer of wood under a coating and with some sort of boarding on top. We’ve been in 18 months now, two messy small children, lots of spills and hard wear on it and no chips, scratches or discolouration so far. Very pleased with it and would use it again. We seem to have a spilt water bottle daily here and sometimes I don’t notice it for a while but it’s caused no issues whatsoever. I did consider engineered wood but was advised against it for a kitchen. First day we moved in the washing machine hadn’t been connected properly and water gushed absolutely everywhere. I was immediately so pleased we hadn’t gone for the engineered wood!!

@Mailegchristmas @BarnacleBeasley @Mosaic123 May I ask which Polyflor you all got? I only got some painfully small samples so it’s very hard to tell if it looks realistic.

I’ve got engineered wood and I regret it.

it marks easily and fades really quickly. You have to oil it, and even then the oil fades quickly.

i would go for karndean if I had the choice again