Luxury Vinyl Experiences?

[Kamma89]

Hi all

Brother has convinced me to go LVT over hardwood, engineered or laminate. He works as a chippe/builder. Said easy to clean, looks realistic, warm underfoot, will last longer etc etc...Sounds good. I'm not about the sanding & sealing life & spill wine often.

But there is SO much choice & the prices vary so much. Amtico/kardean look great but are they worth the money? Some of the stuff in wikes looked just as good to me.

Any advice or opinions welcome. Do you hate the stuff, couldn't live without it, wish you'd spent more or less!

Thanks in advance

Interested in this thread as I'm currently looking at quickstep flooring

My parents have karndean and amtico and apparently it's a pita!

Quickstep was the other one I couldn't remember! Who knew choosing flooring could be so hard

We have amtico in our en suite. I like it more than I thought I would. It looks quite nice and is warm underfoot. I did hear that it scratches fairly easily though. And that you're supposed to do something to it annually. Seal it? I can't remember.

I bought it from a website called Floorbay and used an independent fitter. Saved a fortune.

What size is your floor?

You can sometimes get top-end Amtico on Ebay for cheaps. I got around 18 square metres of Amtico signature parquet for £250. It was enough to do both my hall and my study.

I think it depends on how much floor you can see.

For example we have a room with laminate flooring down but it is used as an office so lots of furniture in a 2.8 x 2.8m room. That means we could plan it so that repeats were hardly visible. It meant opening lots of packs and matching the repeats up, laying it loose to hide the most obvious knot matches then laying it.

We have Quick Step Luxury Vinyl Plank in the children's bathroom as we wanted a completely waterproof floor. Again the room is small and the planks don't have big obvious knots so any repeat isn't very visible. It is fantastic, warm underfoot, cleans easily, easy to lay. We did not leave the suggested massive gap round the edges which seemed ridiculous as it is plastic.

We have a large playroom which is about 18msq so you do see the repeat in the laminate. Now the children are older we are replacing it with engineered wood flooring.

We have Polyflor Expona Beveline in our large kitchen. Polyflor is the parent company of Karndean and the flooring we went with is usually sold for commercial installation. An independent fitter got it for us - he preferred to order it himself - and didn't put any mark up on it. Less than half the price of the normal retail price for even the 'entry level' Amtico products and Karndean.

Elsewhere in the house we have some Amtico and Karndean we inherited with the house. It's easy to look after. Quiet to walk on, feels warm to the touch. Isn't damaged by liquid spills. If you do damage it, the individual tile can be removed and replaced.

Looking at polyflor camaro wood. Had a local business give me a quote.

Next week a tradesman will give me another quote and I will make my decision then.

I have quickstep.
Only installed about 4 months ago and very happy although we did get fitter back as it expanded in the heat and lifted. But it seems all sorted now.

We put camero parquet in our hall and I love it. So easy to clean and so far has been very hard wearing

We have and really happy with Harvey Maria LVT. We have one of the patterns in our bathroom and wood effect in another room. The wood effect looks better and is more hard wearing than the laminate we had in our old house.

Love our Karndean. People I know who went for engineered wood floor in high use areas (eg hall) have regretted it

I got this Quickstep one
www.flooringsupplies.co.uk/vinyl/16888/quickstep_livyn_pulse_pure_oak_blush_vinyl_flooring?adtype=pla&keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItLHOmuuT1QIVSrvtCh2b1w0iEAQYASABEgKJXvD_BwE

Really pleased with it, reassuring to know it can be steam cleaned and is fully waterproof and it looks close enough to wood for me. You don’t get any water marks like you can with laminate. Definitely worth the money imo

smash that is my perfect floor! I'm planning on parquet vinyl in the entrance hall and through to the kitchen. Just need to save up the £££s

Thanks for all the really helpful replies. I'm glad so many of you have had good experiences with LVT. @whereis I was worried about pattern repeating but don't think our rooms are big enough for this to be a problem. @smash that's my dream floor, looks gorgeous! We can't afford the fitting though, double normal planks.

Found a brand today called pro-tek-flooring and were very impressed but only with their excel long plank range.

@piglet. Great idea about offcuts/ends. Hadn't occurred.

www.pro-tek-flooring.com/commercial/

Just in case anyone wants to check it out. We found it in a few independents & floorsave

Amtico

Superb
Blown away by customer service

I chose a LVT from Tapi and for a 10 x 10 bedroom it was about £500 all in. It's a mid-dark wood effect and looks really posh. It wears well and I've never had to do anything to it. That price included them boarding out the room and making a perfect surface first. They were also extra careful to do a neat job around my radiator pipes & fireplace.

Had both amtico and karndean in a few homes and it has been brilliant, cannot fault it.

We had installed Karndean through the ground floor when we moved into our house 20 years ago last month.

It's survived pets, two kids and is bombproof. It's only this year that we have had to start thinking about replacing it and that's partly because we are refurbing generally and have moved doors etc.

Will definitely be replacing with something similar.

Something I was just told. Might have to have boiler replaced before new flooring is laid.

Ignore my link. After speaking to a few more floor experts went karndean. Fingers crossed!