Which type of hard flooring for sitting room?

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We are looking to replace the carpet in our sitting room with hard flooring, and need to have something durable, as that’s where our DCs spend lots of time. We don’t want to remove the skirting boards as that would be likely to bring down the plaster as the house is quite old, and wanted to avoid beading, so had planned on having wood-look LVT. We have, however, been advised by the person who came to quote for LVT that because the floor is tiled under the carpet and they don’t known what’s underneath the tiles, maybe just sand, we need “breathable” flooring, otherwise we could risk developing rising damp. It looks like glue-down LVT is therefore out and we have been advised to have click LVT instead. Reading up on click LVT afterwards though, it appears that you need an expansion gap at the edges for that, so we would still need beading.

So my question is please, can anyone suggest any alternatives, or do you have click LVT without an expansion gap, as the person quoting seemed to think that would be okay (they are a very long-standing local company who we have used before and would normally trust)?

Hold you just put a big rug over the tiles?

Or just bite the bullet and have it done properly with the skirting boards off and the subfloor replaced etc. That would achieve you LVT.

We have oak which is breathable. But you would need all the skirting off for that I’m afraid

Theres some amazing vinyl flooring (lino) warmer under foot and also quieter

I got mine from IKEA 20 years ago, it's great.
I'm just about to replace it with carpet as the kids have left home.
It's still in good condition.
I didn't take the skirting boards off (old house, worried it would take the plaster off the bottom of the walls). I tacked white wooden beading to the bottom of the skirting boards, caulked the joins and painted it and it looks like part of the skirting boards

Just finished renovating an old house. We had damp problems in our main sitting room. The builder had to actually lift the floorboards that was below the carpet and fit more air vents below the sub floor as there wasn’t enough airflow. We put down an engineered herringbone oak floor. It needs an expansion gap and we definitely couldn’t take the skirtings off as it would have taken half the wall with it! Put white beading on and painted it the same as the skirtings and it honestly looks fab!

Imo if you can afford it I would get those tiles up to see what’s going on, assess the situation and then put down a decent wood floor and live with the beading!

how old is the house?

Why not just replace with carpet?

Any reputable fitter will advise against doing twhat you want to do simply because there's no way of knowing whats under the tiles, although you could lift them. ALL wood floors require expansion gaps and a flat floor which I would take a guess yours won;t be.

Thanks for all of the replies. We’re not really sure of the age of the house, as different parts have been added over the years - definitely older than 100 years, and the oldest parts including this room are possibly 18th century, going by some another property in the street where the age is documented.

We really don’t want carpet, we have it elsewhere and want something different in this room for practicality. It’s possible that the tiles may have been laid in the 1970s as they don’t match the lovely quarry tiles elsewhere in the house, and an adjacent room has a concrete floor, but we’re not sure.

How solid and flat is the floor? You could float a wooden floor on underlay but you'll need the expansion gap still. I can't see a way around it, you have to either remove the skirting or have beading. Someone might be able to chop the bottom off the skirting board perhaps, but unless it's dead straight it will look total shite.

If you do decide to go ahead, I've been very happy with bamboo flooring and another thread has had recycled scaffold boards as a floor which looks great

I think that the floor’s quite flat but I’ve not seen it with the carpet up - in other rooms, you can feel slopes in the floor where different rooms have been joined in the past but this one is a square (well maybe not quite given some of the angles of the walls!) presumably original room. This makes my house sound awful but it’s basically a relatively large rural old property.

Waterproof laminate has also now been suggested to me by the fitting company, so I am going to keep thinking about ideas, thanks.

I've had both solid oak and machined oak , they both look great and long lasting , not sure how you will go about putting any floor down without moving the skirting boards but maybe if they are deep you could go inside them , not sure if this would look naff or if it would even notice

I really like wood but think that my children would trash it, as it’s for the room where they generally hang out! We have engineered oak in the kitchen, which seems to be on top of concrete but the previous owners put that in, so I don’t know what was there originally - that’s hard to maintain but I think it’s partly due to the finish and because they used the wrong types of cleaners, although I’ve improved it by looking after it properly.

I had thought the tiles were 1970s additions but having just seen an old house near to me for sale it looks like they’re pamment tiles, so maybe original as that fits with where we’re located. Hmm, even less sure what to do now.