wooden floor for hall

[clangermum]

If money was no object, what would you have?

I'd like to know what the ultimate is, so then I can work my way back from that...

Criteria are:

Hard wearing - able to withstand a buggy happily (and there's no point in me waiting for this phase to pass because because my work means there will always be toddlers around)

Gets better with age, or at least no worse

Not too clicky underfoot

Easy to clean

Any advice? TIA

We have original wooden floorboards in our hallway and they're great - we have a big door mat when you immediately come in door, then floorboards all the way through hall (victorian, so long and narrow). We do have a sisal runner on the first part of the hall, which is hard wearing & collects any dirt / wetness off of buggy wheels.

I guess if I could chose, then i'd prefer original victorian floor tiles, as they're so beautiful, but the original wooden floor boards are great - they don't show the dirt either, so you can get away with not having to get the mop / vacuum cleaner out everytime someone comes in the door with slightly mucky feet!

Personally, I hate laminate - too clicky clacky and slippery, yuk!

We have Victorian floor tiles, which were a major factor in choosing this house. They look lovely, v durable etc. But they're also cold, a bit tricky to keep looking good, and, I hate to say it, a bit dangerous at the bottom of the stairs with littlies. I love them and would never change them, esp as dcs get older, but if you're going to have toddlers around for a long time I agree with cheese. We had the wooden floorboard/big doormat combo in our last house and it was pretty much perfect.

I would love love love Minton floor tiles in a hall.

We have wooden parquet and it's brilliant. Original to the house, we had it restored. It's getting a battering from our DCs but we can always resend and restore it down the line!

We have reclaimed wooden floorboards (they came out of a church hall IIRC) with an inlaid sisal mat inside the front door.

The wood is excellent as it hides a multitude of sins! Its also easy to clean and hard wearing.

One of the buildings where I work has the most beautiful Victorian tiled floor I've ever seen but its really suffered from all the salt that's been trodden in with the recent snow and ice and its really slippery when wet

We have the original floorboards/large mat combo as well and it works well for us, the floorboards are already battered so a few more dents/knocks etc just add to the character I treated them with a really hard wearing wax finish which isn't slippery but is easy to clean. Ours copes admirably with a crawling baby & buggy etc, a running toddler and dh who doesn't take his shoes off and tramps mud etc through the house

I'd love original floor tiles too but not practical at the moment and I'm happy with my floorboards

I love the look of tiles too but agree with what you're saying.

Wooden floorboards - we stayed in a B&B once that had these and the look was great but the little indentations and imperfections looked like they would collect stuff in them. I hadn't thought about putting a finish on them. Is this what the wax does effectively, besides looking nice cassell?

I guess parquet is smoother to start with. Classic too.

Well the finish doesn't stop dust etc accumulating but it does make it easy to clean off - I've spilt paint and god knows what on mine and it comes off easily and still looks good nearly 5years after I did it. . this is what I've got - it's called ronseal diamond hard floor wax if the link doesn't work.

Thanks cassell