pale (ish) limestone or marble floor in a kitchen - stupid idea or not?

[Fozzleyplum]

I am revamping my kitchen and thinking about having a limestone or marble floor in a pale-ish colour (anything from dark cream to a sandy tone). I've read the other threads about this type of floor, and have taken note of the comments about sealants, but the threads are a few years old, so I was wondering if there were any new sealant products.

We have teenagers and cats, and we don't generally have wild parties of the red wine spilling variety, so I can be fairly confident that any spills would be cleaned up quickly, with the possible exception of middle-of-the-night cat sick(!).

Any advice/thoughts would be welcome if you have experience of how this type of floor wears in a kitchen, and how careful you have to be.

TIA

Wowfudge, the Karndean look good, but I do have one significant issue with stone effect tiles. I have a fairly large floor to cover, and all of the stone effect tiles I have seen have a limited number of different patterns. This means that you get the same pattern repeating over the floor. I looked at some lovely tiles yesterday, but every 4th tile would have the same, quite distinctive, veining pattern which I find very distracting - a bit like the "chicken tiles" of the '60s and '70s.

The only convincing ones I've seen so far are the Fired Earth stone effect tiles, but I could have 4 real stone floors for the same price!

Sorry, but I wouln't not ever. Admittedly, my old kitchen floor was a poor imitation of the lovely tiles linked above but they were similar colour (presume they were porcelain). Hated them with a passion.

I suppose it does depend on the room and how you live. The back door to the garden (and utility room) was in the kitchen, so with family of 5 including outdoor-loving-children, we were in and out of the kitchen all day long, even in winter. It never, ever looked clean, apart from the 30 seconds after it was cleaned. It just looked grubby continuously and needed cleaning a couple of times a day.

It was also freezing to stand on which could obviously be overcome with underfloor heating. But I loathed them so much I am never, ever having tiles of any colour ever again in a kitchen (slight over-reaction I accept!).

Namechanged, what type of floor do you have now?

Solid bamboo - replaced the tiles about 2 years ago. About to start large extension and will be having bamboo again or engineered oak.

I'd never heard of bamboo flooring, so I've had a Google; it looks good.

I think I ought to have worded my post more carefully. I have no problem with keeping a pale floor clean from a day to day point of view. My current floor is pale greenish porcelain tiles, and I just hoover then steam mop them.

My question was really about how a light coloured stone floor would wear, with regard to permanent staining from things being dropped on it, and how often it would need to be sealed.

It's just solid wood but you can use it in a kitchen whereas you can't usually with solid oak (or similar).

You are obviously better at cleaning than me

Check out "Devon bone" from troops tiles. They are limestone effect porcelain and are stunning. We have 20mm thick limestone within the fire surround in the living room and when I used these in the bathroom I leant one against the fire place and was shocked how close a match it was. They do the limestone version and a grey version, both have a tumbled edge.

Or even topps tiles!

Blimey, Engineers, those tiles look lovely! I am off to have a look a them before I make any decisions about stone. I like the fact that they don't have any distinctive markings that give the game away! Thanks for the recommendation.

These are ours we laid in 2012 at our last house - excuse the gratuitous puppy pics I found when searching through my old albums for pics of our floor - we went for really wide grout lines and as I said upthread they were a pita when we got our next puppy who leaked rather a lot! Even liberal sploshing of Simple Solution failed to thoroughly eradicate the pong.....

I love the Devon Bone from Topps. We need some real limestone/lookalikes for our hall here so might consider those.....thanks for that Engineers!

Those tiles are exactly the type of thing I'm looking at, Raphaella ( and the puppy is gorgeous!). How did the tiles themselves stand up to wear and tear/ having "substances" on them. I am looking at having my wood kitchen painted grey/ green, similar to yours in the photo.

Hi Fozzley They stood up very well overall to daily use with everything except puppy 'accidents' cleaning up ok. We did seal them first and mopped the floor frequently, but we designed our kitchen extension without a door to the garden you had to go through the loo-tility first! so mud from the garden on paws/feet was left on the mat in there, which obviously helped!

I have no problem with my almost white smooth tiles - easy to steam or I use my robot braava thing. BUT I cannot keep the White grout clean which is driving me mad. I now have lovely pale tiles and dark grey grout!

How the fuck do you clean grout?

For those of you with a scooba do you just use plan water in it?

Plain water in my scooba - sometimes I put a little splash of lemon juice in ! My lady who helps me out sometimes, put vax floor cleaner in it once - didn't harm it !