Laminate floor du jour

Dining room currently has carpet, which the kids can make remarkably manky. Thinking about replacing it with laminate.

Anyone bought any recently? Any decent brand/stockists?

Have had some from b&q before but they are £££ and there must be somewhere cheaper. It’s laying on concrete.

Cheap laminate is awful.

However, prices of laminate and engineered flooring have gone through the roof, first COVID and then the war in the Ukraine.

We just had some oak effect LVT fitted in our kitchen/diner that I’m quite impressed by. It’s the 3mm thick click-together stuff. As long as your floor is good and flat then it appears to be a simple fit. I paid someone to do it because they can do in 3hrs what would have taken me at least all weekend. It just cuts + snaps with a sharp stanley knife so no faffing on with sawing every end.
Biggest reason we went for it was that it is fully waterproof so, when the kids inevetibly chuck a glass of juice all over it, it doesn’t absorb half of it and then swell up like cheaper laminates do.

apologies for tangential reply…. however, over the last 2 or 3 months I’ve been looking at replacing my badly damaged/swollen/delaminated laminate flooring, and have been asking friends what they’ve got if I like the look of it.
So far, top of the list on appearance is vinyl tile flooring from ‘amtico’ but it looks like it needs a very good base to lay it on.

We went to the local independent flooring place and got them to do it, iirc the brand was Lifestyle flooring. I can’t recall the exact price per sqm but it wasn’t stupidly expensive. We went for a cheaper range as we have the house on the market so didn’t want to spend a fortune (obviously the Tories have caused the selling process to be a tad more drawn out though!).

I’ve karndean Korlock stuff (think it’s spelled like that) – not the cheapest I think, but went down quick and looks good (IMO!). not too cold or hard to walk on, if that makes sense for a hard floor…

Another vote for LVT, I love the stuff
We’ve got b+w patterned tiles in the hallway and parquet in the kitchen all bought from Harvey Maria
Laid 4mm ply over the floorboards first to give a good surface (paid other people to do it)
It’s not the cheapest, but we will definitely be doing more of the house

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I second the vinyl planks rather than laminate. I recently fitted it to the ground floor of our new place. Was all concrete floor with underfloor heating. Laid a thin underlay then the vinyl planks on top. Easy to lay as stated previously just score with a knife then snap off the end to get the correct length. Very easy instal. Only faf was fitting the Scotia trim to cover the ends as it’s a floating floor system. The trim I got was just stick on but it took a while to get all the mitred cuts right.

Another option is glue down vinyl. That can be laid hard against skirting boards so no need for Scotia trim.

LVT is fantastic. I used Polyflor commercial grade 4 years ago throughout my house. It was cheap as chips then but not sure it is now. The cost was in the floor prep and fitting. Seemingly zero wear and tear in 4 years.

Polyflor commercial is about £25m2 now, still pretty good really. Floor prep is key for any glue down LVT job though, there’s no such thing as a self levelling screed!

Click stuff is much easier for the diy’er but scotia beads look pants IMO, it’s fine if skirtings are being fitted afterwards, same as for Laminate. I’d not have laminate anywhere near a house of mine now click LVT exists.

I went to move a picture hook in the office and ended up repainting the room and have almost finished laying the new floor. B&Q 12mm thick laminate and acoustic 3mm underlay. 12 square metre floor for £290 total

And yes, I do have enough to finish it tomorrow.
And yes, I will be putting some quartic to cover the cut edges.

Quickstep. Fantastic stuff.

Nothing wrong with a bit of Scotia.

Convince me lvt click flooring will work in house that destroys most other flooring. I’ve got a 3mt2 floor that gets heavy use.

I would go with, in fact I went with, vinyl flooring that looks like boards.

We’ve come a long way from cheap horrible lino, modern stuff looks good, wears well, is incredibly quick to fit and is miles cheaper than laying boards down (as well as, IMO, softer and warmer underfoot than boards).