Flooring in open-plan area: mix and match?

[brumeye]

We're finalising the construction drawings for our extension and refurb. The extension will give us an open-plan kitchen/dining/living area at the back of the house. One of the many, many decision we're trying to make is: what flooring should we have?

A picture of the layout is on my profile. Dotted lines are walls to be removed; the divide between the kitchen and dayroom (as the architect insists on calling it) is a half-height wall that is just high enough to hide all our washing-up behind.

I'm very keen to have engineered oak flooring in at least the dayroom and dining area. The rest of the decor will be pretty modern and unfussy, so oak should add a bit of warmth. I'd be happy with it in the kitchen too, but my DW is worried about how durable it'd be in case of dishwasher leaks and general wear and tear - so is pressing for tiles in at least the kitchen, and probably the dining too (I think having tiles where kids will run around is asking for trouble!).

We're having (wet) under-floor heating, so I'm hoping that either will work well enough with that.

Is it possible to transition from wood to tiled flooring without it looking shoddy? I'm not really convinced and would much rather keep the same flooring throughout, but has anyone had a similar mix of flooring and been happy with it?

Have a look at Harvey Maria, I'm having this in my new kitchen...have to wait until next year though!

We have bamboo right through our kitchen, dining room, utility room, hall and my office and then the archway and doorways to the family room and living room have brass joiners to the carpet.
It looks fine.
My main tip is to have HUGE mat wells - ours are 4 x 3 foot, set flush with the top of the bamboo so that all dirt stops there when shoes and stuff track in from the garden etc

We have this kind of open plan kitchen/diner/family room. The kitchen area, utility and loo have a quarry tiled floor and the rest is engineered oak. It works really well and looks good. Between the quarry tiles and wood floor we have a wooden strip (3cms wide) and there is a slight height difference of around 1cm on the tiled side and less than 1/2cm wood side but it's not really noticeable and nobody, including young clumsy DCs, have tripped over it. In fact this is the first time I've even thought about this since it was installed nearly 2 years ago! It doesn't look shoddy at all, if it had it would really bother me, so it must be okay .

I do have to admit to liking having the same flooring for the whole space as, to me, it follows through on the whole open-plan flow.
We had solid oak throughout kitchen/dining/play-space and no problems with using wood in the kitchen area (it was eight years old by the time we sold and still looking new). It was also useful in reducing the amount of breakages that would have occurred due to small child 'fat finger' type situations.

We had engineered wood flooring throughout living room, dining room and kitchen when we went open plan and it flows really well. We have had plenty of spills and the flooring has been absolutely fine for nearly 2 years now. much easier to clean than tiles and grouting.

Thanks for the replies, all very helpful. Relieved to hear people are happy both ways, makes it feel like less of a life or death decision

Still working on my OH to get oak throughout but the salesman at the wood flooring place did me no favours yesterday, going on about the risk of scuff marks at the sink if you don't keep kitchen floor scrupulously clean, and then having to re-oil every 6 mths in kitchen! Didn't go down well...

I have to make the same decision.

When I had extension like yours built I laid laminate flooring in it. The kids left the back door open a few times when it started to rain and the laminate got wet and has started to lift. It needs to be replaced.

I have engineered wood in the living but would not consider it in a kitchen. Each time I've dropped a sharp object in the living room I've damaged the wood.

So am looking at tiling the kitchen and extension area but separating out the rooms with a thick oak threshold strip. That way I can always change my mind and lay wood in any of the rooms independently at a later date if I want to.

I've got some sample tiles to try out and it looks good.