we have to have vinyl - can it look good enough for open plan kitchen/living room?

[ErnesttheBavarian]

Due to lease and noise issues we may not have wood, laminate or tiles.

I think this limits us to vinyl, which I've never had before. CAn't help but feel a bit dubious about it. I feel ok about it in the bathroom. But the sitting room/kitchen will be open plan. I think carpet in the kitchen and under the table will be trashed in no time, so I either need to have 2 floorings in 1 room (carpet in the sitting room end and vinyl in the kitchen end) but worried this would look weird. OR I could have vinyl in the whole room, but concerned it will look crap.

We have quite a limited budget, and I don't know vinyl.

Can it ever look ok/good enough for the living room?

Anyone know of any good places to shop.

Have a look at Amtico (brand not shop) - very posh vinyl, but also ££££.

I need more ££ than ££££!

Yes, it can look fine. In a previous house we had wood plank effect vinyl in the kitchen, and people often said how nice it looked

I have vinyl in my kitchen black tile effect and love it very soft and easy to keep clean etc. In fact I am trying to persuade DH to take up the old and tatty laminate in dining room and replace with vinyl (friends have it in their kitchen/dining/computer room all open plan) and looks fine. The only thing I wouldnt be sure about is lounge area. Got ours in carpetright as they had remant in right size right colour but my firend ordered hers on ebay and came out alot cheaper and practically the same as mine

Have a look at Karndean which is a bit less expensive than Amtico. We bought ours from the internet and found a local fitter - reduced the cost by about half.

We had Karndean all over in our flat and it looked very good. Was about £4500 for 3-beds, hall, living room (including the cost of fitting).

Vinyl has changed alot from what you'd consider vinyl only for bathrooms. We've just changed the floors in our house and have vinyl in our kitchen/diner area - its Polyflor. We looked at Amtico and Karndean but our flooring guy recommended Polyflor as similar quality at a slightly more reasonable price. All of the companies use vinyl tiles and you can pick different grouting effects. We also looked at real stone etc at the same time and tbh we prefered the vinyl - nice and warm underfoot, not too hard if you drop something or if one of the DC falls over. You can get larger tiles with a more modern large tile effect and lots of different stone/wood effects. They are very realistic. Our guy said to pick a pattern that had a more textured surface (rather than completely flat) for a larger area as it looks more realistic. Might be worth getting someone in to quote you. Also for all these places - Amtico, Karndean or Polyflor (Camaro) just go to the website and order samples for free. Have a look and see for yourself. Plus John Lewis have boards of posh vinyl that you can look at.

Another huge advantage (besides being warm under foot) is that it's very quiet. This was a big consideration for us, really didn't want parquet or laminate.