High quality wood tile throughout or combo of regular tile and real wood?

[Linguaphile]

So, we're building a house and the flooring quote has come back insanely high. So as not to drip feed, we're in Luxembourg and building through an off-plan purchase, so we are limited to using our contractor's suppliers, so no option to get another quote.

The initial spec (i.e. what's included in the price we've already paid) was to have tile throughout. They're saying that the supplement to have wood everywhere except the bathrooms, utility and entryway, it's going to cost 31k. 21k just to put wood on the stairs alone. It's not a super posh flooring--just an engineered hardwood that's about 85/m2. So to clarify, it's the installation and prep costs to put wood on the stairs (which apparently are different to those for tile) that are killing us, not the actual m2 cost. Eeeekk!!! And sob.

So. At the moment it feels we have two choices. Option A would be to save ourselves about 21k and ditch the wood for tile in the stairs and still do a nicer aged oiled wide plank oak in the bedrooms, landings, hallways, and living/dining/kitchen. Option B would be to choose a really nice wood tile (the posh ones seem virtually indistinguishable from wood in look and feel except on very close inspection and actually more expensive than the wood per m2) and just bung it in the whole house so everything has a continuity to it.

With the former we get real wood, which my heart loves. But I don't know if the effect will be the same by only having it in the bedrooms and living/dining/kitchen. For example, you wouldn't see any wood coming in the front entry, which makes me sad. My other concern is that real wood in the kitchen/dining area was a little iffy anyway since, you know, water. In the latter we get the look and more or less feel of real wood at least, plus there's the continuity of having one flooring throughout the whole house. But it's fake wood. Which I hate on principle. LVT, laminate, etc pose the same issues regarding installation costs on the stairs, so tile is our only real alternative to the wood.

Is it even worth it to do wood if it can't be everywhere? We have young children and possibly may rent it out or sell it in a few years, so the need for durability is also in the back of my mind. What would you do???

I wouldn't kid myself that a tile is going to look like wood. Or at least I've never come close to being fooled.

I'd probably negotiate to have bare floors left and a discount for them not doing the tiling. They are definitely taking you for a ride with the quote (I'm in London but presume things don't cost several times more in Luxembourg). Tiling isn't actually that cheap either - I'm not sure but I seem to remember that laying wooden floors was pretty similar in price to tiling per sq m. Perhaps, they really can't be bothered to do it so gave you a ridiculous quote.

Yes, you're probably right about the wood tile. I think I've gone off the idea of using it.

I'm not sure if it would be worth it to go with a separate supplier as the labour costs will then not be included (we paid for them with the house purchase)... but will explore that route. Luxembourg is actually quite a lot more expensive than London for a number of things (I've lived in and priced up building work in both places), but this is above and beyond the normal premium we've experienced. I honestly don't understand why stairs should pose such a problem.

We were looking at this tile for the bathrooms and entryway, though now having second thoughts if it potentially has to go on the stairs as well. It's like a natural slate texture, thought it would be easy to keep clean and hide the dirt. But is it too brown??

I feel greyed out and would happily go with sth browner.