Engineered oak floor experiences

[Tiredmummaoftwo]

Currently looking to swap the porcelain white tiles in our open plan kitchen / dining / living room to engineered oak wood planks.

I'd like to know peoples experience who have this already? I love how it looks and the warmth it brings to a room but not sure if it's particularly practical and durable!? We have two young children and two dogs.

Many thanks x

I have both engineered and real oak flooring. If you can afford it get real oak flooring, its much more sturdy, although they look almost identical to each other.

I found the engineered oak is much softer than real oak. I wouldn't have it in a kitchen purely for dropping things on as my engineered oak floor has ‘dents’ where i have dropped stuff on it (hasn't happened on my real oak flooring when ive done the same).

i have animals and they don't scratch it. For warmth, it both looks warmer and is warmer than porcelain. I would do it purely because i hate porcelain tiles.

We have it in over half our rental and I despise it. Every piece of furniture we have, even if they have those little plastic safety things on legs has scratched it. It's covered with marks like scuff marks from shoes. I have a paler patch the size of a large wok downstairs where I presume a bit of water ran off whilst I was ironing. Upstairs there are huge dents where a wardrobe fell over during assembly. I moved a piece of furniture last week and now I have bright, pale, massively visible wood chips. There are stains under radiators where they have clearly leaked, and the patches my LL oiled before we moved in are quite obvious.

It's absolutely hateful and completely unsuitable for a rental. I hate MDF flooring but I would far rather have it than this stuff. It looked beautiful when we moved in, now it's just a permanent liability that makes me absolutely miserable to look at and wondering how on earth I am going to fix it, mostly because there are now so many parts of it in so many rooms to fix.

I don't think anyone with kids should get it. It's so soft that it reminds me of balsa wood sometimes. And it has to be glued down, right? So it's hardly easy to fix when it goes wrong.

Sorry, it's laminate I hate, but I have had it in several rentals and it's never caused me anything like the grief 11 months of this stuff has.

Engineered wood is softer than solid, but often it's down to the quality as to whether it dents more easily. It depends how solid the core is, some are less dense than others.

Lacquered won't scratch as easily as oiled, but when it does, it's more noticeable and you can't repair a small patch like you can with oiled. A bit like laminate really, the high quality laminate around these days is pretty hard to scratch, but looks awful when it does.

I'd order lots of samples and hammer, scratch and stain them to see how they compare.

I’d also consider karndean/amtico wood effect LVT (indestructible) and wood effect tiles.

It dents if you drop something on it or pull furniture across it, so really depends on your lifestyle- with young children I wouldn't choose it (chucking a toy on the floor or whatever will dent it every time). Honestly have a look at laminate, there are some brilliant ones now that don't look all plain and plasticky! Or, if budget allows, LVT.

We have it in our hallway and I love it - the lady who supplied and installed ours recommended we didn't use it in our utility room as it really doesn't like getting wet - so I don't know if that might be similar in a kitchen although clearly lots of people do install it.
We have kardndean as well and I must say that is absolutely pristine compared to the marks on the engineered wood.

If you do go for engineered do your homework and don't buy on price alone as the quality varies.

I'd order lots of samples and hammer, scratch and stain them to see how they compare.

Sensible!

OP, I should have added, not all flooring is created equal. My LL cut a lot of corners during her build so it's very possible she bought a cheap joblot. As she would pay someone else to maintain and repair it for her (when she lived here, at least) she wouldn't have really cared if it required a lot of work.

I am glad to hear that the quality of laminate has improved over the years from others.

I’ve got it in my living and dining room. It looks great and is really hard wearing BUT it’s swollen by the door to the kitchen and bumped up a bit and that drives me mad every time I walk on it.

I have real oiled oak and then Lvt in the kitchen that pretty much matches the width and colour of the real oak wide planks. It works very well that way and most people don’t notice the difference. I wouldn’t like Lvt/Amtico in the living areas but it is really practical in the kitchen and individual bits can be easily replaced (must keep spares as they discontinue colours). Obviously LVT doesn’t age the same way as real oak but even my real oak ages differently in different places so overall I feel I have the best combo of look and practicality.

I have brushed and oiled engineered oak flooring downstairs in a dark walnut colour. It's awful. It's noisy / creaky to walk on, dents and scratches and discolours easily. I wouldn't recommend it. However my neighbour has lacquered engineered oak flooring in a normal oak colour and it's much much better for wear and tear.

I was amazed at the quality of the engineered wood floor we put in out our old house.

Since we have moved we now have real wood floor (put in before we moved). It looks great, but it is actually much harder to maintain. It seems to get water stains much more easily and also seems to be lifting in some areas (may just be issues with the fitting).

We were going to have engineered wood in our kitchen/dining room (open plan), hallway and a couple of other rooms downstairs but got put off by what happens if it gets wet, especially in the kitchen area.

We've gone for wood effect Amtico LVT instead and love it!

Had engineered in a N-facing conservatory (with underfloor heating, where soild wood isn't an option). We even did DIY in there, and it held up fine.
But
No kids, no dogs. And If I was painting DIY projects in there, I covered it with a old flannel sheet.
Engineered wood will take a few sandings/refinishes. Laminate one or two if you're lucky.
If you could possibly afford solid wood, I'd go for that, it will wear forever. And oil it rather than varnish it, it's much easier to maintain.

I was considering engineered oak. Would strand woven bamboo flooring be more durable?

Laminate one or two if you're lucky.

You'd be extremely lucky if you were able to sand or re-finish laminate even once!

Our kitchen is engineered oak.

Do your research as quality varies.
Ours is about 11 yrs old and there's no dints or dents, even when I move the table/arm chair etc. There's a few scratches but not obvious (but I know they are there).
I've been happy with it.
We have laminate in the bathrooms and wooden hallway floor which looks good but I find a nightmare. It seems very needy and wants lots of care.

We have teens,dog and cat.

I have engineered oak in my living room and it’s fantastic. Been down 7 years an still looks great. However, I am careful not to get it very wet wet cleaning it. I think I’d be a bit more concerned about having it in a kitchen area. We have a Karndean flooring in our conservatory which gets a lot more wear with wet dogs and muddy boots and that looks good and copes well with everything we throw at it.

We have it in kitchen, living and dining area (all open plan) and hallway.
It's slightly raised in a spot near the dishwasher probably due to water spillage, but it's not very noticeable just feels a bit bouncy under foot.
It's 13 years old and in my view it looks fine. If you look close there are lots of marks and scratches (we have dogs) but on the whole it still looks nice. I probably need to oil it again and then it would look even better. If you oil it often enough, then water or spills just sit on top.

Thanks for your replies! Just had
the quote back and it's £115 per m2. It's supposed to me a very good quality product, can be sanded 4/5 times.

Not sure how this compares to other brands though so ill definitely get some more quotes.

I think you have to have engineered oak as opposed to the real thing if you're having underfloor heating put in? Not sure if that's a consideration for the OP but curious if anyone had heard this?

@Coldcoldheartdualipa

That's what we were told by a firm who did real and engineered oak.

We did stone in the kitchen, engineered oak in the living areas and bedrooms, tiles in the office, utility, pantry, entrance, bathrooms; real oak for the stairs

Yes, it's due to the temperature change - solid wood won't cope and is prone to warping. Engineered can handle fluctuations much better due to it's core not being solid.

We have it through our downstairs and I love it. Yes, it has odd scratches and bumps, but they are tiny, no one has noticed them but me, and we're an active household with small kids and pets. Frankly, everything has odd scratches and bumps, so clearly the floor is going to be no different!

Re: water - get your fitter to leave a good expansion gap at the edges. 2 months after ours was fitted, we had a burst pipe in the ceiling. It was like someone had turned a power shower on over my brand new floor. We got a bucket under it turned it off at the mains, and got mopping, but it was still swimming in water. Once it had dried, no damage at all.

I'm having in my kitchen too as soon as we have the funds.