Wood floor - SO MUCH CHOICE

[GatherlyGal]

How does one go about choosing a floor? Parquet or planks? Solid or engineered? Natural or dark? Laquered or oiled?

Anyone got a kitchen / hallway floor they love? House is 1920s kitchen will be fairly classic with mostly white units.

Any recommendations or suggestions very gratefully received...

We were too nervous of leaks to do wood in the kitchen but we did our hall with Ted Todd planks. The wood itself is fine but the fitting was awful and it’s made an expensive floor look cheap. We have given up arguing with the company we used who subcontracted to a fitter who then subcontracted again to somebody who I can only assume had never fitted a floor before.
So my advice is spend as long, if not longer choosing the fitter, and don’t trust the supplier not to send a wally round.
sorry that is no help with choosing the style!

We have engineered oak everywhere incl kitchen. We love it. The only thing I’d changenis that I got brushed, but dirt gets stuck in the frooves, it’s so hard to clean. My friend got a smooth finish and hers is so much easier.

Also be awaee it does change comour very slightly in the sun. So if you have a rug in one place all the time when you move it there is a different coloured patch on the floor.

Engineered oak (with a decent thickness of 6mm so it can be sanded) and hardwax oiled. Although only in the living room, we got Amtico LVT for the kitchen and hall. We also got a good grade of oak that didn't have many knots. I really love it and it copes well with the fluctuating temperatures of my suspended floor 1930s house.

I did take the skirting boards off and redid them from scratch too over the flooring so there was a few mms of hidden "breathing" space for the wood next to the wall to deal with heat and cold contractions of wood but engineered wood contracts and expands less than solid plank I believe.

Its been down over 8years now, however my 3 year old has scratched and dinged it a fair bit with his toys so could do with a sand when he's old enough to not just randomly pelt his toy cars as hard as he can into the floor anymore... 😅

Thanks all. Looks like engineered wood and an excellent fitter are what we need.

I was originally planning on having engineered wood and ordered samples in different finishes. The sample with a lacquered finish was more stain resistant than the oiled.