Please talk to me about wooden floors, engineered wood or real wood...

[ScarletWomanoftheVillage]

We are just about to have engineered oak floor put down in the entire ground floor, hall, kitchen, dining room, sitting room, tis beautiful.

The kitchen fitter who is here doing the kitchen says engineered wood isn't as good as proper wood. Quite late in the day, but can still change order for flooring. Just can't remember what the advice was from floor people and why we went for engineered.

Any clues?

Because if your washing machine leaked, real wood would bow and buckle?

It would bow and buckle but after a short period return to normal . With real wood you can sand it in the future to give it a new lease of life if you want to or paint it. The problem with engineered wood is that whilst it may be top of the range now, it will be out of date soon enough whereas real wood doesn't date iykwim.

Ok, thanks for that Olivia. With the engineered wood, I think they were going to put some kind of silicone down or something in areas which might get wet.

Thank you Pickled. I just don't know whether there are any advantages to the engineered over the real, and why we initially chose it. Apparently there isn't much difference in price... But is there something I'm missing?

I think I was told engineered wood was better in areas with high humidity and over underfloor heating. But I wanted solid wood or nothing, so was originally going to put down laminate until I could afford solid wood. Plans have changed though as boasting I have just bought enough solid oak to do my extension second hand and it's still perfectly straight and lovely, just needs a sand and worked out to £3 a metre.

We have engineered wood, which was more expensive than real wood. It still look great 8 years later, we did the whole house over a couple years. It has had the occasional sand and re-oil. I think engineered can cope better with central heating. We do not have any gaps in the floor at all. Friends had real wood and the floor warped because it was laid too close together, so couldn't expand/contract.

That's down to bad fitting though, rather than the floor I think. Whatever you have put down, good fitting is key. I've seen very inexpensive laminate look lovely, because it has been well fitted, and very expensive solid wood look rubbish because it has been finished badly at thresholds and walls. Have you spoken to the fitter/flooring company? They're probably best placed to advise. My carpenter is all about solid wood, but then he also HATES Ikea kitchens, which I'm very fond of...

We have oak engineered wood, have no gaps and the top layer is real wood and can be sanded 3 times. Love it.
In our old house we had the same flooring everywhere and after 5 years looked still very good, nowhere near sanding, not even in the hallway, despite 3 dc and dog.

I think underfloor heating is the main reason to go for engineered. Do you have UFH?

I thought the advantage of engineered wood was a lower tendancy to warp or distort due to humidity etc.

Also you can't put solid wood on to concrete.
We have a solid wood floor which is very old in our living room

We have just bought engineered oak flooring fir the hallway because the sub base is concrete.

Thanks for all your replies, plenty to think about. Don't have underfloor heating. Went to see floor people today and seems solid is cheaper to buy, more expensive to fit.

Not reached decision yet. DH favours solid, and I think maybe engineered, but that's just today! We keep having to make these type of decisions, and change our minds several times before we eventually work out what would work.
Thanks all