We move in to a new build quite soon and thinking over the living room floor. Had planned to go solid wood but having seen friends problem with it being so easily scratched and this was a £1200 floor. i know it can be sanded but have been thinking about going laminate. Seem some nice flooring at 8-13 pounds per sq m which is really cheap. Should i be hesitant about putting down this laminate in a living room.
Hiya Jay , yeah that's a downside of hardwood flooring. Don't get it you've got a dog, need to keep the nails clipped, don't let women walk on it with high heels either lol. Some great laminate flooring out there, looks like real flooring and can take heavy traffic , just search around.
Jay, engineered timber flooring is also an option. Cheaper than solid wood, can be sanded if necessary. And there are some very competitive deals around too. Like Gatt says, search around and go into a number of independent retailers for advice.
Go for a good Quickstep floor if I were you and was wanting a proper hardwearing floor. Around £20 sq metre would get you something good.
I am looking at ukflooringdirect, have ordered a couple of samples. sent them an email to make sure i get off cuts so I can see what it actually looks like. Ill prob go engineered for the living room and laminate in the four bedrooms.
I fit floors for a living and would put good quality laminate down every time ahead of engineered. 5 years down the line unless an engineered is treated with kid gloves it will be scuffed and scratched, laminate will look much better. You can push ukflooringdirect very hard on price by the way. They are a very sales orientated commission based firm.
Real wood floors/ engineered wood floors are for show homes and rooms that are not used, as golden boy says, go for a good quality laminate flooring over the real wood, and be able to enjoy it rather than worrying about every scratch and dent in real wood.
That's your perogative, but as someone who has personally fitted hundreds of square mtrs of all 3 types of flooring I am speaking from personal experience. I have quick step v grooved 4" wide laminate flooring straight through my living room and dining room which has been down for 7 years and looks as good as it does the day it went down, and everyone always asks is real wood, I have a real wood bamboo floor upstairs in a bedroom which has very light traffic but still has lots of dents scratches etc which show up a lot. As I've also said I've fitted real wood floors for lots of clients, and when returning to do further works I've been told by a fair few of them they wished they had chosen laminate instead, I've actually taken up good quality real floors and changed them for laminate, so you may disagree but I am talking from actual experience. I'm not saying real wood flooring is not a food floor, I'm just giving my personal opinion to the OP, and also the the opinions of a lot of happy customers who chose laminate, and the ones who opted for real wood but ended up regretting it. But I do also have a lot of happy customers who had real wood/ engineered floors but I will say that the majority of these are elderly customers who haven no kids and less traffic using the floors so they take less stick.
I chose engineered wood floor instead of solid wood floor for my lounge, picture will be coming soon in 'project photos'. I was originally going to install it using reymar floor adhesive straight to concrete floor, but this required more skill so ended up using sonic gold 5mm underlay instead and laid it as a floating floor. The planks are are more stable due to there make up, a solid floor will start cupping. Engineering wood flooring is mostly supplied in either 15mm thickness or 18mm. The 18mm floor may have a real wood thickness of between 5-6mm, where as a 15mm could have a 3mm wear layer. I visited UK flooring as they are only 10 miles away from me in Coventry, as well as many other outlets.
Ditto on that mate. I fit tons and tons of flooring and by a country mile the most resilient of the three is laminate. It stands up to everyday hammer much much better than engineered. People sadly still think laminate is the cheap dull lifeless cheap beech stuff that went down in the 80s and 90s. Wheras in reality good laminate is a work of art and actually often more expensive than comparable engineered. If you treat a newly laid engineered floor to a bit of a spillage here and there, the odd set of high heels, a bit of gravel in shoes, a tv cabinet rolled over it it will look like a wreck. Treat a good laminate the same and it will look brand new.
Got to agree with Siab , and Goldenboy , but I do love, the hardwood floors , when you've just fitted one , absolutely stunning, not for the faint hearted tho lol.
For what it's worth, from a DIYer... I recently finished fitting a new kitchen. It's open plan to dining and conservatory, with a total flooring area of approx 22 square meters. The flooring that I removed as part of the project, I installed nearly 14 years ago. If it wasn't for the fact that the new design/layout of the kitchen needed a bigger area of flooring, and that range, (from B&Q), is no longer available, we wouldn't have replaced it. It's been brilliant! The conservatory part was laid 4 years ago. I managed to get NEW flooring for that, (still boxed), on ebay. When I laid the new stuff you couldn't tell the new from the old, even on the join! The stuff that had been down for 10 years, (at that point), really was as good as new! Just on a couple of places, where I'd overdone the cleaning off of sealant, on a couple of joints post fitting is there any wear at all. Pics of it here; http://www.simsybloke.webspace.virginmedia.com/ebay/flooring.html I've used similar, (not exactly the same), laminate in my parents kitchen, and that's been down for about 5 years and is still brilliant. I've not used any other flooring, wood or engineered, so I can't compare, but I'm certainly more than happy with our experience. Blowing my own trumpet a bit, I did make a bloody good job of laying it, and used a sealant, (http://www.unikainnovation.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&id=197&Itemid=200), on the joints, to protect against water ingress, which I'm sure has helped! Regards, Cando
common solid timber floor is really weak to be damaged than laminate wood floor, some wood like ipe ,cumaru,acacia with pretty higer hardness than coomon oak wood, but davantge is real wood is so nice for home decor to enjoy a feel of nature, 25 years plus life span ,better heat insulation and comfortable for walking ,despite higher budget.Still for low traffic area of your room like bedroom, solid wood floors will be first choice I think.
common solid timber floor is really weak to be damaged than laminate wood floor, some wood like ipe ,cumaru,acacia with pretty higer hardness than coomon oak wood, but davantge is real wood is so nice for home decor to enjoy a feel of nature, 25 years plus life span ,better heat insulation and comfortable for walking ,despite higher budget.Still for low traffic area of your room like bedroom, solid wood floors will be first choice I think.
Sis-in-law will be looking for 'timber' flooring soon for her planned hoosie purchase, and it seems pretty clear from above that a good quality laminate is the sensible way to go, with no real compromise on appearance either. Any actual recommendations on actual makes to look at for laminates? Which ones look the most realistic? Cheers.
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