Travertine flooring? The good, bad or just plain ugly. Can you help ,please

[flossie64]

we are building an extension on our kitchen to make a family area/ snug/ garden room. We need to re floor the existing area + new bit . I am thinking i would like travertine but don't know much about it.
The cost ,is it prohibitive?
Durability?
Do I need under floor heating with it?
Anything else as a good alternative(not tiles)?
TIA

Hi
Sorry not much practical help but I love Travetine. My mum has it in two of her bathrooms floor and ceiling. It is porous ( not sure if spelt correctly) so had to be treated/coated with something.Travetine is expensive, But looks amazing.
However its bloody freezing under foot.
We went for castle Travetine in our bathroom. Not sure what that is, just loved it. looks similar but obviously doesnt have the raw natural look but still cold.

Sorry meant floor and walls

anyone else got any opinions

Just spoke to someone about it yesterday - we were considering it for walls. They mentioned porosity of it, and said that it can be a bit difficult to clean and pick up dirt, etc. Think it depends on the 'smoothness' of the one you get, and how it is treated.

I have looked at the honed and filled, as I want a smooth finish.
I don't like the tumbled for floors ,maybe ok on walls though.
I am worrid we will be freezing if we do not put in under floor heating.

yes, it will be cold underfoot without underfloor heating

Thanls for that NDP .
now for the next question - What kind of under floor heating and is it very expensive?

I have a wet system (there are 2 types, water or electric). They are expensive to fit and a bit of a nightmare if something goes wrong as you have to dig up the floor to get to the problem (unlike with radiators where you can do external remedial work). The wet system I have had to be laid and with a thin layer of screed over the top.

It is lovely and toasty underfoot but doesn't warm the room up like radiators do. Maybe it is just my kitchen, it is a very big room and so it takes a while to heat up properly. When we have our kitchen redone/adjusted (hopefully next year) we will add a nice radiator (a modern one) just to help the warmth along.

Underfloor is expensive to install but is supposedly cheaper to run than standard central heating.

We have it throughout the ground floor of our house and each room works off its own thermostat so you can have it warmer in some rooms than in others, so from that point of view it is very controllable.

I think wet systems are marginally more expensive to install than electric systems.

It would be for a large area ,for us as well . I need 35m2 of flooring and thats not under the kitchen units!
There are 2 radiators in that room though.

Ours is 52 sq m

You have to be careful about the thickness of the tiles with u/f heating. Too thick and it kind of negates the u/f. I don't know the exact limit though.

Another downside of travertine (or indedd, any type of stone) is that is very hard, anything you drop, you break ! We have lost many a glass, mug and plate.

We have it in our hallway (travertine is a type of limestone, right?), got it from Fired Earth, it was the honed and filled type and then given a non scratch protective coating, highly polished looking when we moved in a year ago....it looks totally beautiful but it is covered in tiny scratches now! You can't really tell unless you are looking at it very closely and to be honest I'm not too fussed as I guess it is a natural material and will age gracefully.

Also have underfloor heating sounds similar to Nom's but I think it is good at keeping rooms at good room temp without you noticing, so many times I thought the heating was off and that it was just warm/clement this winter, but one day there was a problem and it went off and then I realised it was frickin' freezing really. It is just a more subtle type of heat than radiators I think. We have no radiators in the house and I wouldn't go back to normal heating now.

Just to add we have no problems keeping the hall warm, and it is a double height hallway with mezzenine, so theoretically the heat could escape all the way to the top of the house but it does not.

With 2 radiators and a bit of underfloor you would be roasting!

Unless I'm misunderstanding (highly likely!) you say 'not tiles', but travertine is tiles. Do you mean not ceramic? We have porcelain tiles which look like real stone and they are brilliant, no sealing needed...

I know they are a type of tiles ,but by tiles I mean not ceramic