Is Laminate Flooring Worth Having?

[cornetjo]

We are about to have our two rooms knocked into one big room. At the moment, both carpets are absolutely stinking, with a 4 year old and 1 year old tipping things on it etc. We have thought about getting laminate flooring in the re-done room plus in the hall way too as hopefully it will be easier to keep clean. Is this the case, or is it just as difficult to keep clean and should we resort to a patterned carpet until the children are older.

Advice please?

We fitted laminate flooring to all our rooms when we moved over 2 years ago.
I never want carpet again!!!!!
Spills are cleaned up so quickly and easily.
Choose a fibre board underlay.
It costs a lot more, but is really worth having.

I am a big fan of wipe-clean flooring, and you have a few years of tips and spills to come yet. Could you run to a real wood floor of some type - it looks better than laminate. Or at least get one of the more 'authentic' lookig laminates - it shouldn't be more expensive than a carpet, anyway.
You can be much more flexible with a hard floor and change the look more easily and more often, with a new rug etc.

Or do you have some floorboards that you could strip and stain - that is the cheapest option!

What age is your house?

Or, as an eco-friendly alternative to laminate, how about lino/marmoleum? It is warmish to the touch, comes in a good variety of shades and patterns, and is light years away from its dowdy old image.
If your house happens to be a 20s/30s/40s terrace or semi it is also in keeping with period detail!
We are approaching carpet day of doom downstairs too and am working on dh to replace the whole crunchy/fetid eyesore with lino, which will probably be cheaper too.
Think stripped boards are nicest if your boards are up to it. Or (drool) real parquet.
I think I am in a minority on Mn, but the chemicals used in the manufacturing of laminate and its artificiality does put me off.

Apparantly bamboo flooring is hard wearing, not extortionate and natural.

A note of caution re Bamboo floors - we have one in our living room, and it looks lovely, but scratches SOOO easily!! When I see it invariably referred to as a hard-wearing flooring, I laugh! We went for the gloss finish, and it might be better in matt I suppose.

Laminate is great however second marmoleum as a wonderful alternative. Have a look at the Forbo Nairn website to see all the wonderful colours they do. Also if you can afford it how about Amtico. Very very hardwearing, wipeable for all the little spills and fantastic with kids and pets running around on it. Comes with 20 (25?) yr guarantee. I had a house with both Amtico (downstairs) and marmoleum (upstairs). Was wash and go and never any hassle.

We got laminate floors for our kitchen last year, and I thought I'd love them, but was really happy to move away from them. They looked really good, and did wipe up nicely, but were very high maintenance. DH's aunt said the same thing about hers she got for her entranceway and hallway at about the same time. Any time people walked on them with shoes on, you could see the shoe tracks, even though they weren't dirty. If even so much as a spot of water got on them, you could see where it landed even when it dried. Her floors often had direct sun on them, and that only highlighted the fact. We had the gloss finish, and even though we used the reccomended cleaner on them, they weren't nearly as glossy in a few months' time. They also got small chips on them fairly easily.

Oh yeah, and if you walked on them with bear feet, you could always, always, always tell.