What flooring for hallway?

[amyboo]

We're about to get started on a huge renovation of our downstairs, including extending the house into the garage. As we'll have more downstairs hallway and we have to move the toilet, soil pipes etc, the existing hall floor will need to go. We currently have the same 1970s tile floor in almost all the downstairs (lounge/diner and hallway). The kitchen and toilet have different tiles.

DH and I went to a local flooring shop and fell in love with hard wearing wood effect LVT flooring (brand Lamett: parquetvinyl.be/fr/collections/mantaro/produits/mantaro-spice). We've chosen a tile that says it's for high intensity commercial use.... The idea is to use this in the hallway (both old and new parts), the lounge/diner and the new downstairs office/guest bedroom.

I was feeling quite happy about this decision, but we just had a builder round to quote for the work, and he was very against the LVT, said it will get wrecked quickly, will lift, chip/tear, etc etc. He said we should dig the floor down lower so we can add insulation (one of my complaints about our tiled lounge floor is that it's very cold!) and then put wood effect ceramic tile back down.

Has anyone got LVT in their hallway and/or lounge and can tell me how it's wearing? I can't decide whether to stick with the LVT or go for tiles again.... FWIW, we have 3 primary age kids, and a cat, so I need something that will wear well.

Our friend who is a surveyor and sees lots of houses also advised against LVT in our period home. Said that ultimately it does look like LVT rather than the real thing. We've settled on porcelain tiles and electric underfloor heating. Gonna get solar panels on roof to offset some heating costs.

Thanks for the feedback. Ours isn't a period house (1970s) so I'm not too worried about it fitting with the style of the house. My concern is really about durability and how it stands up to the wear and tear of family life. Underfloor heating isn't an option for us, due to the cost of all the other building work.

I have a 70s house and just finished a similar renovation.

We've got LVT. Our builder was fine with that and it looks great through out the downstairs.

We have underfloor heating for the main living area too.

Just an FYI, tiles, insulation and digging down will be adding £££££ to the cost. Do you already have a contract with a flooring provisional price?

We decided not to insulate but it's still cost us about £11k to do the whole thing and level the floor

My hall LVT has been down about 10 years. Had the same put down in my kitchen, conservatory & utility about 18 months ago.
Hall looks no different to the new stuff.
Normal family life, dog + visiting Great Dane most weekends for the last 3 years.

Oooh thanks so much for the comments! Really helpful I'd looked through reviews online and was quite happy with our choice until this annoying builder put doubt in my mind! Another builder who quoted was very supportive of the choice.... We're hoping that with the LVT we can get away with just replacing the top layer of concrete screed and not having to re-do the entire floor (which is what the 2nd builder was advocating).

We are having all downstairs redone in a few weeks and have gone for a hard wood floor over lvt. For us though this was more price based decision as our living and hall areas are huge, the price for the lvt including the preparation needed and fitting was almost double.
I love that the lvt is totally waterproof! However we decided that the wood floor would last the 10 years that we need it to, and then our mortgage is paid off. We plan to do the house up then, and I am dead set on the lvt for that.

We have had LVT downstairs in every house we've owned (DH is a floor layer), never had any issues and is hard wearing and easy to clean.

I hate tradesman who just come in and shit all over ideas. If it is totally unfeasible fair enough but LVT is really durable so he is talking out of his arse. Personally I would get a different floor layer in to do the LVT. It's obvious your builder doesn't want to do it so just get an experienced floor layer in to do the flooring. My bet is your builder doesn't know how to lay it properly and is worried he will mess it up and it will look shit.

Thanks for the reassuring comments! Never fear, I don't think we're going with this builder - we're still at the stage of gathering quotes. This guy challenged me on several choices we've made - I really can't be doing with that when I've got 3 kids and a full-time job to manage on top of managing this build!!

Some types of LVT is more difficult to maintain long term than tile or Engineered Wood or even laminate. I had it and you had to be really careful which cleaning products you used - you can also get permanent water damage if you don’t wipe spills immediately. And steaming more often than once or twice a month is also a big no, no. Wasn’t a problem for us as we were using it in a rental & changed it between tenants but I wouldn’t want it in my house. In fact I’m also doing a huge reno and getting porcelain tile throughout the house.