kitchen flooring - practical ideas please

[jazee]

Hi, we are choosing flooring for our new kitchen. I was just wondering what has worked for you and what may not have worked. New kitchen going in in a couple of weeks time and have no idea about flooring. Please help!

Do not get lino or tiles with any kind of pattern etched into the surface, these grooves will become dirt magnets and you will curse and curse and curse. Can you tell I inherted a kitchen floor like this?

I have just this week replaced my horrible kitchen flooring with large (50cm square) tiles. The new tiles are not one solid colour, but slightly varigated. The idea is that small amounts of dirt will not be that obvious and there are no nooks and cranies that will trap muck. Obviously this will not work for you if you are very houseproud, which I am not, LOL.

Do not get any tiles with a very smooth surface though, otherwise any time the floor gets wet you will end up on your backside!

My mother swears by a specialised kitchen carpet - she like being able to vacuum her kitchen - I don't think that would work for me though.

We have marmoleum. It's been down for 10 years and looks as good as new. I love it!

Hi vonnyh, Sounds interesting - but what is marmoleum. Thanks.
PurpleKate - will def note what you said about tiles with etched pattern.

Loving my laminate!

I have dark grey marble effect amtico - not the cheapest option but warm underfoot, looks good and mostly forgiving when you drop things.

Comes up a treat when it's mopped and looks as good as new after two and a half years of heavy traffic

Another vote for amtico. We went for sparkly marcasite, v glittery, and quite fun in the kitchen.

On a practical level beats the carpet which was there before (why?), it's easy to clean and looks good. We have a concrete subfloor so never going to be that forgiving.

Bamboo! I have it and love it. Extremely durable (if you get the strand woven sort) and beautiful. You will find me on other floor threads getting quite OTT on the issue.

We have ceramic tiles, but I second purplekate, ours have a slight mottle and texture so you don't see every crumb and smudge. I love the fact that it is bombproof, can cope with any spillage or furniture scrape without being damaged, and is dead easy to clean (but woe betide if you drop something, it won't survive!).

In our old house we had engineered wood, looked lovely, but it was much more prone to damage.

Before we put the tiles down we had a really busy blue and yellow lino floor. Absolutely horrible, but boy did it hide the dirt! I spilled a tin of sweetcorn once and I was still finding kernals weeks later, they were so well-camouflaged!

Whenever I swept the floor I would end up with a MASSIVE pile of crumbs, and think "blimey! where was that lot hiding?"

Have had:
carpet tiles (Very Bad Idea except that you can replace them individually when they get too scummy);
quarry tiles - better idea but does mean every single thing you drop will smash;
and now sealed wooden floorboards. Much my favourite - things have the option of bouncing rather than smashing and it's still easy to clean. Gets a bit slippery though when wet, so you have to clear up any spills very fast.

My mum always had lino - and it had issues as it got older (wear, staining, tearing).