Flooring - tiles/wood/laminates....

[anonymousbrainsnatcher]

Hello all. Pretty new to this Topic, but will be picking your brains regularly over the next 6-8 months so hello!

Assuming money is not an issue (it is, but please assume for the moment it is not) I want the most practical, but still attractive, flooring surface for a hall/boot room/downstairs shower room/kitchen/sitting cum play room. It's a cottage, but become fairly contemporary in its general style. We do however have quite a lot of beams still.

Intending to run one surface throughout. This will be approx half my down stairs. I inherited bumpy kitchen floor tiles. Nice to look at, but hard to keep clean and won't be in keeping with new kitchen. My other tiles, in the boot room show every flippin paw print and water mark and just never look "clean" whatever I do. Currently we have seagrass in hallway which I love, love love, so hard wearing, so easy to keep looking tidy but I can't feasibly run this through kitchen and playroom.

I've never had wooden, but am very on the fence about it - not sure it suits our style, am convinced it will just trap dust/dog hair etc, the kids will slip all the time, the dog will scratch it (she is not a scratcher, but unintentionally this must happen??) How do you mop a wooden floor again, without leaving water marks etc. Does it need polishing/oiling/or whatever? I need seriously low maintenance and hard wearing in light of the amount of traffic. PIL's just installed a wooden floor at vast expense and now I can't take the dog there, panic when the kids zoom their toys across it etc.... I can't be like that in my own home, worrying about scratches on my beautiful (heinously expensive!) wooden floor.

Laminate?? Never had it, so don't know how easy to keep looking good. And, are there laminates that don't look like laminates, what are the "serious" makes of laminates?

Thanks in advance.

Hello brainsnatcher. Have you seen the 'natural flooring' discussion where we talk about bamboo flooring? Scroll down a bit in this topic and you'll find it. It might be an option for you.

Good luck with it all.

I hated the idea of laminate flooring, until I found some really good looking hard wearing stuff. We bought some oak laminate so it's dark and not light and cheap looking. It's also hard wearing in terms of high heels and furniture. I mop it twice a week, and hoover it twice a week (no water marks or scratches to report). We bought our from Focus-it was on sale for £11/per squared meter...usually £29 so I recommend looking at the websites and keeping an eye on the prices and catching them. Failing that check out builders' merchants, they're usually much cheaper but as good. Don't forget you'll need underlay (mega cheap on the internet) as well as beading (again cheaper on ebay-even including delivery). We had our whole floor done for £100. And my dh fitted it first time without a problem.

We have Amtico Spacia in our kitchen/dining/family room and it's great. Very easy to clean and maintain and looks good too. Isn't damaged by water. We have the traditional oak narrower plank, but it comes in all sorts of finishes. It also works well with electric underfloor heating.