kitchen flooring

[hana]

Wondering if anyone out there in cyberland has a a dalsouple rubber floor in their kitchen? ( Or similar, Altro also do one) It's the rubber flooring with raised circles. DH is convinced its THE floor to have once we've installed our new kitchen, but I'm worried that it will be hard to clean around the base of the raised circle bit, and that dirt and grubby things will accumulate there. Anyone near Kingston might have seen this in the stairwells of John Lewis.
And if not rubber flooring, what would be your top choice?
Your opinions would be great, thanks!
hana

Jasper, I was going to ask about slate flooring too - I was in Homebase yesterday and they have some big floor tiles described as slate, the ones they had were in 2 shades of grey (dark and darker) and I was wondering if they come in any other colours. I really liked the look and texture but my kitchen is pine with yellow walls and I don't think grey slate would go with that at all.

Jasper, have a look here and click on "view slate show reel" and have a look at the various effects you can achieve. We bought slate tiles very cheaply from Wickes & B&Q and put some underfloor heating under (as recommended previously on Mumsnet) and I am really pleased with it. We have Oak units (natural oak, not dark stained) and yellow walls and I think it looks really good, the tiles have a mixture of greys, reds and burnt orange through them.

When you look at the "slate show reel" our kitchen floor is somewhere between the picture with the wicker chair in it and the picture with the pine kitchen units.

Demenented, as my 20m old would say...."Ooooooh...niiiice!"

Go on then, tell me about underfloor heating...

slate is lovely we have it next to our aga to put hot things on, but it can mark quite easily

slate is lovely we have it next to our aga to put hot things on, but it can mark quite easily

sorry don't normaly repeat myself!!!!

Thanks Jasper, I'm rather chuffed with it myself!

The underfloor heating is just a sort of thermal mat thing that you put under the tiles and it connects up to a thermostat on your wall to control the temperature. It takes the chill off the tiles and is apparently very economical to run.

naayie, have you sealed the slate (we have also coated ours with a tile polish) as I believe this stops it marking.

ours is italian slate, can you seal it with ordinary tile polish? your floor sounds lovely, we have just done up our cottage, i loved every minute of it ( apart from the mess, the dirty builders, the stress and the money)!!!!!!

naayie, have a look in a big DIY store (B&Q & Wickes both do it) we used two separate bottles (well in fact three, tile cleaner first, don't know if this is essential though, probably Flash would have worked just as well) tile sealer and then tile polish, I think you can get away with just sealing them but the polish leaves them with an almost wet look which brings out all the different colours in the slate. DH did it so it cant be too difficult but there were periods of time when we could not walk on the tiles due to drying. HTH.

can anyone other advice? my kitchen floor is horrid, its fairly new, but its a bugger to clean, i have to get on my hands and knees to scrub it. i dont know what type of flooring it is, but i am currently painting my kitchen in various shades of purple, the cupborda are an off white/blue colour, shelves etc will be beech. but i'm stuck when i'm thinking of doing the floor. the rest of the flat is(or will be) oak laminate, so dont know if laminate will be overkill in there, or whether soemthing else will go nicely. its my last room to do, so any ideas would be good.

Can anyone tell us - do flat rubber floors attract the dust and dirt more than tiles?

Do you have to clean them more than tiled floors, for example?

Trying to decide for our kitchen.

Thanks!