Wood floor in kitchen? Help indecisive kitchen doer-upper...

[AandM]

Hi, do you have solid/engineered wood or Karndean on the floor in your kitchen? If so I would appreciate your advice... We've been given lots of conflicting advice on whether warping, scratching and general maintenance is a problem with wood in a kitchen...

We love the look of tiles but they're a bit cold and hard with little ones, and it's a big family room with sofa etc so prob not ideal...

Considering karndean too (wood) so if you have that please let me know if you'd recommend it.

Thanks in advance!

[snowboarder]

We have a limed oak effect karndean throughout our ground floor, including the kitchen and utility room. It's fantastic, easy to wash, doesn't scratch (unlike the engineered wood floor down previously) and the pale colour seems to help with it not looking too bad despite the kids/cats etc.

It definitely lays better on concrete floors though - we have both concrete and timber and despite the screed there is still definite flex in the timber in floor areas.

[DaveR]

Bamboo flooring is very good - hard, stable, cheaper than wood and obvs warmer and 'softer' than tiles i.e. dropped stuff doesn't always break. Any flooring other than tiles will scratch a bit over time, but if it didn't it would look a bit unnatural.

[Hawley]

Have you considered wood-effect tiles? Pricey, but some can look excellent:

http://www.porcelanosa.com/gb/floor-tiles/ceramic-parquet.php

[simonethebeaver]

They don't have to be expensive. We have fantastic wood effect tiles that everyone visiting loves (and our builder is now putting in his own home) and they were ?20 per square metre.

But I think the original poster didn't want tiles.

[RoLo1]

As we were told when we put engineered wood in our kitchen by the guys at Wood4Floors (based in SE23, worth a look), "it depends on how you use your kitchen". So yes if for example you like to use lots of water on the floor, to mop for instance, definitely avoid.

Ours managed 5 years with no problems, except when I left a cotton bag with just washed but not dried clothes out overnight on the floor. This didn't stop is choosing bamboo in our new kitchen though, but obviously we wouldn't leave anything wet lying on the floor again. On a slight tangent though, we had walnut engineered wood in the kitchen, which looked lovely initially, photographed beautifully, but I gradually hated it for all the light it took from the room - so all I would say is try to choose a light colour of wood so it doesn't sap colour. If you do choose bamboo, my experience a few months in, is that it darkens slightly from underfloor heating, so I would probably choose Oak if I had the chance again (though I am going to take up with the supplier, as there was no warning that this could happen).