What Kind of Flooring Do You Like?

Hi, out of the options you mentioned, tile would be the easiest upkeep and most durable. Wood would be okay but not in the kitchen if you are a low maintenance person who does not necessarily want to clean up spills when they happen. Definitely do not get laminate. It is not as low maintenance as wood and you cannot have it refinished.
You can pick a nice tile that does not show dirt all that well and it will last forever.

Good luck

I love my Pergo floors. They are so easy to maintain with kids.

We replaced our downstairs flooring with travertine tile. I LOVE IT!! We have 5 pets, 3 dogs and 2 cats, all with different color hair... and you don't see it! The color is gorgeous, and it's super easy to clean. I vacuum and use a steam mop. The key to any kind of natural stone is sealing it well. Do not, do not, do not scrimp on the sealer. Buy the best you can afford. You will be happy you did. You will need to reseal about every 2-3 years. I'm sooooo happy with it!

We love our wood laminate. We have it in kitchen living room and bedrooms. IN fact everyone that comes over compliments it and some think it's real hardwood. It's a warm wood color with alot of grain and some texture. It gets well used because we have 4 kids and a dog in a small house and it has held up beautifully. I just mop it with Vinegar water. It is a dream. If you go this route, get some with variance of colour and texture. It's much more giving.Also, get one with a lifetime warranty on it.
Good Luck.

We have berber on our stairs, bamboo in most rooms, ceramic tile in an entry way, hickory in the kitchen/dining room. We live in Tahoe so dirt and water are always getting tracked in. Our family is 2 adults, a 2 yr old boy, and a 13 yr old dog.

The berber is lovely to step on, very soft. It would be impossible to get stains out of, but it was cheaper than hardwood on stairs and much less slippery.

Bamboo looks great and was the cheapest option for hardwood, but it gets scratched very easily--rolling across it in a desk chair left marks. But it is very easy to clean which is good because it shows every speck, crumb, or hair and has to be cleaned often. But it reflects light nicely, brightens the rooms. I like the bamboo even with it getting marked up (decided that it was like linen, you've got to go with the wrinkles).

The hickory is real hardwood (not engineered) and was quite expensive. It looks marvelous. If we could have afforded it, we might have put it in the whole house. The installation is tricky and if not done right it gaps and moves. Also we had some "water" damage from the old dog and that area doesn't look great. If we didn't have an old dog and had an unlimited budget, we would have put the hickory in every room except bathrooms and entryways.

Tile is the most durable and probably would be a good choice in any room with the possibility of water, food, or whatever spilling on it.

We have wood laminate floors (and have in our last 3 houses) and it's great! Holds up to kids and pets and is super easy to clean. You can mop it the old-fashioned way, Swiffer, sweep, dust mop - pretty much whatever you need to do, and it doesn't require any fancy or exotic cleaners.

In one of our previous houses, we "upgraded" to Brazilian Rosewood pre-finished hardwood floors, and it was a nightmare to deal with after having had laminate. For starters, it was impossible to keep it streak-free, and it scratched under the constant wear of our kids and dogs. The house after that, we went with laminate.

One concern that I had was any kind of wood flooring in the kitchen (laminate or hardwood) - however in our last house we had laminate in the kitchen and it held up great.

I currently also have tile flooring in my kitchen and bathrooms and the only problem I have with it is cleaning the grout. If my kids spill Kool-Aid on it, it is hard to get the grout clean. The grout is sealed, but even so - not as easy as the laminate, where I just wipe it right up. Also it seems like it's harder to keep the floor "grit" free. The dirt seems to gravitate toward the grout lines and then I have to sweep and then mop to get it clean. It's more work than the laminate floors, where I give my 3 year old a Swiffer and SHE cleans the floors! =)

We got laminate and really like it, but we did not go with the high quality; i wish we had. This flooring has held up pretty well, but there are some dings and scratches that I don't think would've happened with the higher end (like Pergo) stuff. We have it in our kitchen, dining, living room, and hallway. It's nice to sweep it or vaccuum, and we swiffer it for touch up. I only mop every other week, unless there is a drastic spill!

We replaced vinyl flooring in our kitchen with laminate and it has been nice. However, I have dropped knives and there are several divots that we can't repair. But I'm sure no ones notices them except me. We have ceramic tile in our bathroom and that looks great. We have wall-to-wall carpet in our children's bedrooms and manufactured hardwood in our bedroom. We have a slab foundation so we could not have solid hardwood - manufactured hardwood is a thin slice of hardwood attached to another wood that includes a moisture barrier. The hardwood seems less durable than the laminate but technically we could refinished the manufactured hardwood a couple of times. The most significant feature I've noticed with laminate/wood/smooth floors is that dust bunnies appear along the baseboards within a couple days of cleaning. We have a cat now so it is worse than without a pet. The carpet is easier to keep clean - I'm sure that dust is still there you just don't see it. Good-luck!

We put extra large ceramic tile floors throughout the 1st floor of our house and had them set on the diagonal. It looks great and I LOVE being able to just mop up spills. Our last place had linoleum in the kitchen and carpet in the living/dining area - GROSS!! I had to shampoo the carpet every 3 months. The linoleum got holes in it if you dropped something heavy or sharp on it.
The tile we have looks like stone and the grout is kinda tan colored - it picks up the main color in the tiles and matches with the carpet in the formal rooms.
I can dump bleach on the tile to clean - or whatever and the stone look hides minor spills and crumbs. Plus, it gave me an excuse to buy a gorgeous area rug for the family room area ;) The rug needs shampooing frequentlly and I'm so thankfull it's only 8x11 instead of the whole house.
Maybe you should consider hiring an interior designer to work with you - or go through a company that sends a designer to your home as part of the purhase process. That way you'll get a fresh perspective on your home and knowlegable advice.

Hi K.,
My husband and I (yes, we did it ourselves!) put down some hardwood laminate flooring downstairs in what could be a family room but is a sports room. We also put a baseboard around the edges. It really looks nice. We got it from Ikea. It is really easy to clean, just mop up the dust with a dry mop, put the dust in the trash and you are done. It's easier to clean than the linolium we have in our kitchen.

Before we put furniture in, my 14 year old daughter and a few of her friends put some music on and they were "sliding" around in their socks--they had a blast!!

Hope this helps.

S.

we just got slate and we love it. it is earthy, strong, has organic textures. it does not show dirt! it can be cleaned with a quick sweep or dustbuster and then mopped with warm water and gentle soap. it's beautiful too.

We have Brazilian Cherry and LOVE it. It's so beautiful and easy to clean. It does scratch easily with a dog and a baby, but I don't think it's that noticeable. I have no issues with streaking and since it's a natural wood it gets darker as it ages. The key two reasons we choose real wood was because you can always refinish it when the kids get older and it looks like new. The second reason is because it increases the value of your home. Pergo doesn't do that. I'm not sure about laminates though.
After my mom went through several different types of carpet I realized there is not one perfect kind of flooring =O)
If you decide on wood and live hear Petaluma, I have the BEST floor guy. Cheap and does a great job, even on his finish work.

try fastfloors.com they will send you floor samples. we used engineered hardwood flooring. love it!!

hey K. -
we moved into the house we're in now specifically because it has hardwood floors: LOVE them!!! we have pergo (laminate) in the kitchen and it's already got a few spots where chips have come off, so i wouldn't really reccommned it...i'd say put tile in the kitchen, hardwood in the family room.
i say nix the wall-to-wall carpet idea and get gorgeous area rugs that are easier to spot clean or can also be rolled up and taken to rug cleaners.
just my opinion! have fun! lucky mama, gets to have new floors!
smiles,
S.

HI K., we actually put down Pergo in our kitchen about 4 years ago and had to pull it up about a year later. Water had gotten on the floor and made it buckle. I wouldn't recommend wood flooring for the kitchen. We have tile in the kitchen. We have engineered hardwood throught out our house. It looks great, easy to clean, and not that expensive. My husband, who is a contractor, puts this flooring in almost every remodel. You can find some of it at Home Deopt. Good luck

We put in the laminate and we love it. Less cleaning and
is not suppose to fade! Good Luck!

We've had Pergo like flooring and it was great. We had a dog and 3 boys on it and it always looked good. Easy to clean, etc. There are several brands out there with some great colors/patterns. Check them all out, bring home the samples and see how they look with cabinets, furniture, etc. We installed hard wood flooring in our most recent home and although it looks really great, since it is not solid hardwood (because we are on a slab foundation), it has developed lots of dents and scratches. Just dropping the remote control from a chair can dent it. Go for the laminate flooring.

We had Pergo in our last home and we LOVED it! Our new house we put in Wilsonart in our new home and we love that too. We have two dogs and a cat and a busy family. The color you choose will play the biggest part in how nice it looks with out often cleaning. Also, do NOT get the pergo or other laminates from box stores. Go to a nice flooring store. The quality is so much better! You won't have a problem with scratches or dents. I have found these floors easy to clean but others disagree.

Hi K.,

I forwarded this link to my hubby since he's a contractor and I thought there was some good advise...we too are deciding which floor to use in our new home. So this was his response:

Hi,
let me updated you about this! Probably you can forward this to those housewives
first thing to talk about is the green side(sustainaibility-renewable) after... this:
just like any other choice of hardwood floor, fading, cleaning, scratching this depends basically on
the manufacturer on the kind of quality to the final coat, even more, the quality of the prime material
will affect the durability of the final product! cheers!!!

alex

We went with laminate, and I love how it looked. However, less the year after we had it installed, our fridge ice maker had an undetected leak. Undetected, that is, until I noticed the flooring was warped and separating.

I still have laminate in the rest of the downstairs, but I would choose tile for the kitchen next time.

We put laminate throughout the entire house, with ceramic tile in the bathrooms and lundryroom. I love the laminate. We use a dustmop every day and I try to clean it with water and vinegar every 2 weeks (emphasis on try). We've had it 3 years and it still looks brand new. We went with Quickstep with hand chizzled texture.

Need to add, we have several cats who have made messes that have been easy to clean up. Also have a toddler and have around 10 children running through the house several times a year when we have family gatherings. And the floor has held up beautifuly.

We have a laminate wood flooring that we LOVE. It looks nice like hardwood, but is easy to clean!

Hi K.,

We have laminate wood and love it. Ours simulates pecan which is light and dark. (My husband wanted a light floor, I wanted a dark floor.) The best thing is that because it is not one solid color, it takes a lot to make it look dirty.

Enjoy your new floor!