Bedroom flooring for a kids room

[Fiddledee]

Moved into a new house and DS's bedroom carpet has to go its snot green and very old. What shall I put down for the floor in a kids bedroom, he is only 2? It will probably be turned into a study or guest room in the future, we are building two new bedrooms for the kids in an extension in a couple of years time.

I suggested laminate/engineered wood - something very hard due to bashing from toys etc.. DH says it would be too cold when you sit on it and we should just put in a cheap carpet. I think its easier to play with toys on a hard floor.

If you have a nice level floor, we love our cork, it is warm underfoot and not noisy when things are bashed on it and easy to wipe clean. It also would make a nice underlay if you wanted carpet over the top later. It comes in different clours we have a light off white sort of colour.

We've put laminate in our ds's rooms, but have to say I hadn't heard of cork floors.

We wanted something that would be easy to clean so it could cope with the ineveitable wee/vomit accidents and show the dust under the bed/wardrobe etc (I'm not the best cleaner in the world !)

It does the job, and they have rugs for sitting on to play and get dressed on.

fapl, did you lay the cork straight onto floor boards or did you have to ply the floor first? I'm having to do children's bedrooms and didn't think of cork, what a good idea.

More questions, where did you get if from? Is it tiles? Glued down? Some kind of underlay?

Thanks .

Hadn't thought of cork although I'm a child of the 70s and remember an awful lot of cork bathroom floors which were foul.

We put it in our loft conversion. I wanted a hard floor for our bedroom because I am also not good at cleaning and the hair/dust/muck that builds up behind a bedhead on carpet I find a bit disgusting. I didn't want something cold or hard though. The floor in our loft was ply I think and we used cork adhesive. It was very easy to lay ourselves, the only difficult bit was cutting the cork for the edges, you have to get your full weight behind the stanley knife. We laid rectangular tiles in a brick bond format. The only thing is you can't drag heavy things with sharp corners (eg, a big chest of draws, but you shouldn't on any hard floor)or wear stilleto heals on it. We got it from www.siestacorktiles.co.uk/ who are based on Croydon. We have Frost from the Ambiente range. You can also easily throw a cheap ikea rug or something over the top if you want something even softer on top. I love it and would use it again in a bedroom.

Deux, with regards to the sub-floor, you want something very flat because any uneveness and you will get raised areas in the cork over time as the cork is kind of pliable. Although our subfloor is ply, there are 2 spot on our floor where there are slight raised bits which I think may be a screw or a nail. Also, I am not sure how easy it is to take up after you glue it on with the adhesive, but as I mentioned would make a great subfloor/underlay for anything else in the future.

Oh thanks for that. One bedroom is already ply so that would be OK but other one is floor boards so I think we'd need to ply it. Will investigate furher, thanks.

i wouldn't put laminate in a toddlers bedroom. we live in rented and the LL has laminate in all the upstairs rooms and ds (just turned 3) is always slipping up and banging his head. i'm also terrified he will run and slip down the stairs which are too wide and badly designed to fit a stair gate.
i also find laminate cold and furniture slides all over the place and it is really uncomfy for sitting down playing on

can you tell i hate laminate

What about rubber? It can look great, and is very easy to look after. If you get something neutral (like dark grey) it could work for a kids room or a study.

I think the Dalsouple website is worth looking at.

ok laminate out, cork out (i remember sticking scissors into a cork floor when I was little). Now thinking solid bamboo, some sort of amtico, and I will look at rubber but its a south facing room and I'm not sure that would be a good idea.

What about carpet tiles? Also a bit 70's, but there are some nice ones available now. they are easy to lay, and if one gets stained or damaged, just swap it out for another one.

We have laid new floorboards in the DC's rooms and painted them with a durable white paint. Not sure what its called but its used to paint sports hall floors according to DH.

DD will have a rug in her room so it is more comfortable to sit and play, but I grew to hate carpet in their last room. Play doh, spilt drinks in fact cleaning up after any liquid based accident(!) left it looking worse and worse.

I'm thinking a rug is easier to clean or replace if necessary.