Help with Flooring choice - wooden or tiles?

[Unlight]

Hi there,

I'll be moving into a new build property at the start of January. There is no flooring down at present, I'm going to do the ground floor first.

It's around 50 square metres, which takes into account Hallway/Downstairs Toilet/Kitchen (which includes dining and living space) and Utility Room.

I'm completely undecided on what flooring to put down. Because its quite an open plan area, would it be better to do it all with one type?

Kitchen area is gloss white/zebrano worktops. Thinking either a grey porcelain tile, or maybe some sort of Acacia walnut (seen here - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Reduced-to-23-Acacia-floorin...

Are there any problems with putting solid wood down in a kitchen/utility area?

Any help appreciated - I'm completely clueless!

[ineedagallardo]

Tiles in the kitchen all day long.

Wood in the hall gives a warner feeling but for that wow factor it has to be tiles - preferably white.

If the kitchen is high gloss white i'd be tempted to go for black porcelein or maybe even black granite tiles.

[PistonReg]

ineedagallardo said:

Tiles in the kitchen all day long.

Wood in the hall gives a warner feeling but for that wow factor it has to be tiles - preferably white.

If the kitchen is high gloss white i'd be tempted to go for black porcelein or maybe even black granite tiles.

+1 on kitchen tiles. Hallway tiles can also look very smart. If it's a high loss white kitchen (which no doubt has a black worktop), black and white floor tiles can look very good (30cm). I wouldn't try to make the whole downstairs one floor covering though.

[Unlight]

Thanks for the input guys. It's actually a zebrano wood type effect on the worktops, not black - (it's a laminate top, and I find that the black laminate worktops look very cheap.. Want to get a black granite worktop at some stage in the future) I'm thinking that black porcelain wouldn't match too well in that case?

How about polished cream porcelain, with a bit of a white fleck running through?

[henrycrun]

Depends how clumsy the wife is. Plates bounce on wood but break on tiles.

[zcacogp]

I have a friend with a tiled hallway (white ceramic), and have to say it looks quite odd to my eyes.

Personal choice would be wood, certainly for the hallway. Kitchen could be either, but bear in mind that gloss tiles can get slippery when wet.


Oli.

[timbobalob]

We're in a very similar situation - new build to be completed July-ish next year.

In the show house, they've got the same colour tiles running the whole ground floor except the lounge/diner and I think it looks really smart. I'd like to continue it through to the lounge as well, partly because the garden is accessed through the lounge (mess/wet from the garden etc) and I reckon it would make it 'flow' nicely.

I'm considering underfloor heating to take the chill off.

Good point about dropping things though - there's not much forgiveness in tiles!

[Bill]

We have travertine throughout our ground floor and IMO it looks very good. It also hides the dirt better than gloss white or black. We have underfloor heating so it's not cold to walk on.

[mackg]

Have you considered Karndean or Amtico, Karndean is the cheaper option and they do all styles, its not cold under foot and you have very little chance of scratching like you can with wood