Home Flooring

[PeterT]

Any of you have opinions on different flooring types?

With the still ongoing repairs of my home from fire damage, I'll need to install new flooring in the living room / dining room / bedrooms and hallway.

Any thoughts from the masses on Laminate vs Vinyl vs Wood?

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Any of you have opinions on different flooring types?

With the still ongoing repairs of my home from fire damage, I'll need to install new flooring in the living room / dining room / bedrooms and hallway.

Any thoughts from the masses on Laminate vs Vinyl vs Wood?

Cork laminate is nice, especially with an underlay.

[DNSB]

My preference is hardwood but laminate looks good and a heck of a lot cheaper. Vinyl used to be a better choice for durability and water resistance but laminate and vinyl are pretty much equal now. For either vinyl or laminate, a quality underlay is pretty much necessary.

[Quoth]

We did living room with clip together oak boards (pre-sealed) on an underlay.
Kitchen and hall with quarry tiles.

The ground floor is solid concrete/cement stuff.

Not all vinyl and laminate are equal and both are poor in high traffic areas. There are massive differences in underlay, from thin light-weight foam (like a parcel wrap) to self adhesive waterproof high density stuff like a heavy-duty wet-suit material.

Edit:
Laminate certainly can work well in bedrooms and vinyl in a bathroom.

[pdurrant]

I've always liked a solid wood floor. For bathrooms I like actual linoleum, rather than vinyl.

[nana77]

I'm not an expert on this topics, also, but as there are many kinds of vinyl and laminates, you should know that also each house won't need the same things, different builds would need different workarounds, as an house breaths and lives in concordance whitin its structure.
Anyway, I think that an acoustic or thermal isolant mat would be a nice add, as it also usually doesn't costs much (by comparison with the others parts). Thought that the pre-sealed boards have it already.

Those boards are also something I would look at, but not on the rooms where there are stoves; in there I will let the simplest tiles.

Consider also that many boards are MDF rather than wood, not the same thing but might do the job.

@pdurrant: sorry, I know that different Countries has them own culture and standards, I recall to have seen so many carpets/moquette in UK.... but I'm not sure during time how might fit the linoleum on bathrooms; I mean inside won't it keep mildews?
I am for "the lesser the better" on those topics..

[meeera]

I've had the same laminate in the entire house (except wet areas) for twenty years now with minimal apparent wear, and that's with dog/cats and kids/teenagers for the majority of that time.

[Rumpelteazer]

Last year we chose click PVC for upstairs in our new house. When we bought it those rooms each had different floor coverings. Downstairs the previous owners had tiled laid that look just like wood. We left those because they can withstand more wear and tear than the PVC.

With PVC you have to keep in mind that you can mop it too wet, otherwise the glue might dissolve and the planks come loose. But so far I'm liking it. It does hold on to heat to a certain extent. In winter this is nice, since the floor doesn't become cold quickly, but in summer, during a heatwave (like now) it takes a couple of days of cooler weather for it to cool down again.