Show me your karndean!

[Lily15]

Please help! We are going for Kardean flooring in our hallway, corridor, cloakroom, kitchen/diner and study( we are in a bungalow)I chose niveus which is a wide plank, slightly limed light wood. My OH hates it saying it looks like it needs a good dust :( He wanted Auckland which is also wide plank but a real wood wood- quite yellow oak. So I'm trying to find a compromise but of I look at any more samples or the catalogue I might have a small breakdown! I'm hoping some of you lovely ladies can steer me in the right direction- pics would be even better!!! Thanks ( our kitchen is traditional wood white painted units, carrera marble style top with light grey walls) x

I found it very difficult to visualise from the samples and catalogue. So I paid a visit to the Karndean showroom at Evesham. It was well worth it to get a better idea of the overall effect. Might not be practical for you to do that though depending on where you live.

Watching with interest as looking at this too. Can't even decide on wood effect or stone

We've just had Van Gogh French oak laid and we love it. I would try and find a showroom that has large sample panels as that really helped in our decision

Hi Lily15. Came across your thread and thought I may be of some help as I actually work at Karndean in Evesham. Loueytb3's suggestion of Van Gogh French Oak sounds like it would suit your kitchen and the look you're going for perfectly. Other options you may want to look into, though, are the new Knight Tile colours Pale Limed Oak and Lime Washed Oak. For even more realism, maybe try out a sample of Art Select Spring Oak. If you want to see any of these in room settings you should have a look at Floorstyle on Karndean's website: www.karndean.co.uk/floorstyle. We also have a lot of people posting their floors on our Facebook and Twitter accounts so if you want to see 'real homes' photography, you can have a look there. Hope this helps you guys. - Heather x

Our local shop lent us several large sample boards from their showroom which helped enormously with making a decision re colour and plank size.

Have you looked at amtico instead?

What is karndean and why is it good?

I'd be interested in real life pics too if poss as we're considering it as well....

It's fake wood. Pay the extra for real wood, it's really worth it

Having had both I'm with Lavender on this. We had it in the lounge, dining room and kitchen in our last house. To me it was just a bit like well laid thick lino. We've gone for real wood here. That said, real wood may not be practical in the kitchen, we went for ceramic tiles this time. All just feels more 'real' underfoot'.

I have some . Pics on my profile. We have Knight tile Pitch Pine throughout the ground floor. HTH

This is my overall fear with it; that it'll always feel like a poor man's wood (even though it's ££££).

I don't think we can have real wood; there's concrete under our hallway and playroom carpets and DH says the levels will be all out if we get wood - ie will be much higher than the floors in other rooms, plus I think it's hard to lay real wood on concrete... I'd love to consider tiles but not sure that's practical with toddlers hurtling around.

Hellohello - it's fine to lay engineered wood on concrete (using a roll of special underlay). Karndean looks like fake wood, probably because it is fake wood.

Have a look at Kahrs engineered flooring.

We have Van Gogh french oak and the product is lovely and very good for a kitchen area. However, we have had a nightmare with the fitting of it and I wouldn't go for it again due to problems with the fitters (who were karndean fitters) as I don't think that they laid it particularly well.

I have samples of Karndean classic oak, spring oak and summer oak, I already have hickory peppercorn which is a dark wood look, terrible for showing up every speck of crumb or dust so I am looking to find someone who can give me advice on the ones I have mentioned above, I am swaying towards the classic oak and hoping it doesn’t show up so much, any advice would be greatly received. Many thanks.