What kitchen flooring have you got?

[lynnebenfieldshandbag]

We’re redoing our kitchen and hallway in the new year and I have run out of inspiration when it comes to choosing the floor.

We want to have underfloor heating so it needs to go over that.

The builder has recommended LVT - Amtico or Karndean - but I can’t shake the worry that it will just look like wood-coloured lino ie a bit shit. Would love any reassurance on that score.

Tiles, engineered wood, I’m out of ideas. Please inspire me!

We’ve got engineered oak planks with under floor heating. Love!

We are going with flagstone type tiles all the way along the back of our house- kitchen to lounge. Indestructible, scrubbable, and will outlive the me the kids and the dogs.

Agree re: Amtico / Karndean. It’s lino with a fancy name and I hate it (fully accept I’m in the minority with that!)
I have had engineered wood, limestone and porcelain tiles. On balance, porcelain tiles work best for us in terms of wearability, cleaning and look. Impossible to destroy, easy to clean and come in a million different colours and finishes. If the grout gets grubby you can sling some grout cleaner down and I doesn’t ruin it, like it does with actual stone. Cheaper too.

The builder put white tiles in ours. Look clean for 30 seconds. Cold. Would not recommend!

We have tile effect laminate in our kitchen that is heavily patterned - it's like art work on the floor. I love it. It's also comfortable and the pattern is very forgiving and means I'm not sweeping up and mopping it every five minutes! It's also not hard like tiles so is very durable and if something gets dropped on it it doesn't make a mark and things don't usually break. I also find tiles are so easy to crack if you drop something on them.

We had Amtico in a previous house : it looked like black slate and we loved it. We’ve got Karndean (I think) in the new house - greyish wood effect and I hate it. Looks cheap, fitted badly and I can’t wait to have an excuse in a few years to change it.

We have kardean, its lovely and super hard wearing. My dm has engineered wood in the living room and Im terrified of even putting a cup on the floor incase it damages it. Its too prone to marks/dents/water damage for a kitchen. It looks nice but i think my kardean floor looks nicer!

Porcelaine wood look planks, been down for 10 years now

Thank you for the replies! Interesting food for thought. I think I will have to go to a flooring shop and have a look at some.

At the moment our kitchen is half carpet (!) and half bad laminate. I can’t wait to be rid of it.

Does anyone have herringbone pattern LVT/engineered wood? I love the look of this but don’t know if it will date, a bit like grey everything.

I've just had LVT in a new bathroom and it looks shit. Was scratched before the bathroom was even finished and seems to be bending under the heavy things.

I’m going through the same dilemma right now now. Leaning towards engineered wood in living areas and limestone effect porcelain tiles in kitchen area. It’s open plan but happy to have the mix. Have very newly installed wood effect herringbone laminate in the temp rental we are in while building work ongoing and I find it too synthetic even though it’s a top notch job, beautifully fitted and no expense was spared.

Also recommend not going pale grey wood tones, living with it now while renting and it’s very dull.

Love my karndean kitchen floor. Hard wearing, good looking, washable, warm underfoot, as it comes in plank-like sections it would be easy to replace a damaged bit (not that we ever have). Infinite improvement on the cold, hard terrazzo floor it covered up. Would highly recommend

We started out with lino Lived with it for a couple of years but hated it. Then we ripped it up and had LVT fitted. Love it.

I have real wood, but that’s what was there when I bought it. My last house I had vinyl tiles, which looked great til I attacked it with strong cleaner during lockdown and was shocked at the difference! It was mopped weekly but it has really discoloured.
If I had a purely kitchen room (mine is open plan to dining and living areas so all the same flooring) I’d choose tile, possible slate. We had this when we put in underfloor heating and it worked well.
I do have a cheap washable (though I’d chuck it rather than wash) rug that covers most of the U shaped kitchen area.

We have herringbone LVT in a high footfall kitchen - the back door is our main entrance, large dog too. 3 years on it still looks great, timeless.

I wish I had herringbone engineered wood or LVT, because whenever I visit friends' homes with it, I think it looks so nice. Agree with @SiobahnRoy that it's timeless – AA Gill had it in his flat in the 1990s and I can't think of a time in the past 30 years when it would've looked dated
https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/gallery/a-a-gill-archive-story

Don't know if it's annoying to have MORE options but I always think these rubber floors look really great, and they work with underfloor heating https://www.colourflooring.co.uk/collections/rubber-flooring (but sadly I have cheap laminate from Wickes, so not actually able to recommend personally)

We have a related issue so jumping on this thread. Put herringbone LVT down throughout our ground floor - kitchen/diner, large hall, study, living room - as a cost effective, DIY solution after a large, expensive renovation. Love the look of uniformity you get from putting the same thing down everywhere. But already had to take it up in the kitchen as it was moving and gaps were opening up. It’s been fine in the other rooms so we suspected it was due to the floor not being completely level (one large room created out of smaller rooms). Had the floor levelled, relaid new LVT, still have the same problem. Has to come up for a second time! Would love to put down tiles, but can’t justify cost of underfloor heating as well (although DH has suggested installing it between the island and the sink run where all the standing is done). Karndean I would also be happy with, but would prefer a DIY solution. Any suggestions?

We have amazing, original, wide Georgian floorboards in ours. In every other room in our cottage they'd been removed and replaced with narrow ones (when it was last renovated in the mid 1960s I think), but fortunately they still exist in the room we've chosen to be our kitchen 😍

Last house kitchen we had a mix of painted floorboards and original victorian black/red quarries and in the kitchen before that, original herringbone parquet which was my favourite of everything we've had.

In previous kitchens, we've laid real limestone (looked fab, but problematic with puppy peeing on it), porcelain wood planks (loved these) and slate (20-odd years ago, my least favourite but it was very much on trend then).

In 2013 we laid engineered oak throughout the living spaces - but not the kitchen of our then house. It looked lovely but scratched very easily (and our buyers assumed it was laminate!). We've also put karndean in several bathrooms and one hallway. We found it wore well, but imo it can look a little plastic.

I have engineered wood and i absolutely love it. Small house and open plan so I have all of downstairs bar the loo (tiled by builder). It is down almost a year and am just as happy with it now as I was first day.

we have Karndean

it still looks great after a decade. Not fading or scratching or anything. It’s also warm underfoot and never slippery

my mother thought it was wood - but it’s much easier to look after than wood which we had in the living room - and didn’t bother with when we moved - just did the Karndean everywhere

Ohh @OffcomI love that rubber flooring! Argh, another option