Vinyl flooring - how hard wearing is it?

[SparkleM]

I’m looking an options for our downstairs entrance and hall. We currently have cream carpet which always feels grubby due to small boy and pets!

I was initially excited by discovering there was such a thing as patterned laminate. But can’t find any that would give the effect I’m thinking of (looking like Victorian hall tiles without being tiled). There is vinyl floor covering with patterns I like.

I have never had vinyl flooring. I associate it with going to see elderly relatives that had it in kitchens and bathrooms with it being bumpy and easily damaged.

I wonder though if I’m being too quick to discount it. Does anyone have vinyl and would you recommend for a high use area such as hallway?

Our hallway is the only area of our house that can be damp, so I’m wondering also if this makes it a no go?

Modern vinyl or LVT is extremely hard wearing and comes in many different styles. We have Karndean slate style tiles in our bathroom. They’re a world apart from the old sheet vinyl we used to have.

We have vinyl planks in our bathroom that look like wood, they are very hard wearing and show no lifting or damage after a few years down.

We have, I assume (we rent)cheap vinyl in our kitchen. I hate it. We damaged it the first day we moved in by pushing the dishwasher back into place. We've subsequently damaged it dropping a heavy pan on it. It's slightly textured and an absolute pita to clean (I have to be in my hand and knees with a brush to clean it). I bore my DP by telling him that when we buy I'm never having vinyl so it's interesting to read pp posts.

We have vinyl in our hall. A parquet effect. I love it. Hard wearing, easy as pie to clean and looks fantastic. We had Harvey Maria.

Other benefits, it's not noisy, slippy, cold or hard (I've dropped a couple of things in it and they just bounced).

There are different types of vinyl - you can get some which are really thick and hard wearing. We have it in our large kitchen diner as we didn’t want tiles because the pipework may need accessing and vinyl is cheaper to rip up and replace than tiling!

One thing I would say though is stay away from anything with a white / patterned finish. We have that in our bathroom and after a year of use it always looks mucky, even with very regular cleaning. The white areas show up every hair / piece of dirt. I wish I had just gone for a plain wood effect one or something.

Yes, vinyl of today is worlds away from the old vinyl. Great for pets as it's not slippy.

@Lunaballoon I love some of those! Have emailed the website to myself for future reference 👍

We have wood effect vinyl and have had it over 8 years now. Its still in perfect condition and I'm looking at replacing carpet upstairs with it now.

Thank you for your comments. Just had a quick look at Harvey Maria website. There are vinyls on there that are just what I’m looking for. Good to hear positive experiences of vinyl. Like also that it’s not cold.

We've had several types - Amtico, Karndean and currently have Polyflor Camaro on entire ground floor in this house. It was the cheapest out of the three types but still fairly expensive - several years on it still looks brand new and fantastic.