Hellobee Boards

We have a fake wood laminate floor in our hallway that has held up for 10 years. They make fake wood much better these days. We have a laminate floor in the kitchen that I'm not that thrilled with. The rest of the house is the original hardwood. The bathroom is tile.

@2littlepumpkins: We just put in new floors before moving into our new house, so I totally understand! After a lot of research, we got a top of the line laminate (12 mm thick) with a premium underlayment (noise muffling, insulating, and water barrier.) I know people give side eye to laminate but I really love it and I think it looks very realistic. We lived in a house with real hardwoods before and were constantly worried about scratches and our toddler pulling things across the floor. This stuff is indestructible. Also, we opted for a matte laminate and it doesn't show all the streaks and foot prints of a glossy finish.

I've heard from people who have engineered hardwood that it can dent easily. I've also heard really good things about tile that is meant to look like hardwood but it can be cold to the touch and it can very expensive due to labor. I looked into vinyl and thought the color offerings were great but wasn't a fan of the "feel."

Here's a pic of what we got. Sorry for the ramblings...its all a bit fresh in my mind still. Oh and a piece of advice, I would avoid home depot for the installation like the plague. We had an AWFUL experience with them and, luckily, we were able to pull the plug before it was too late (100s on phone calls later) and went with a local company. I thought home depot would be much cheaper since it's a big box store but it was pretty comparable. Good luck!

Our apartment has hardwood and it is one of my favorite features of our home! The kitchen and bathroom are tile which I also love, but it is cold on the feet which is less plesant during the winter than the summer, haha.

@Coral: I love the look of that!! Wow!

We have real original hardwood! It's old, a lighter honey color with thinner slats but I love it! You can't see dust on it because of the lighter color (our previous home had dark engineered hardwood and you could see everything) and since it's old and already a little dinged up (character, right?) I don't worry about my girls messing it up!

We have hardwoods throughout the house. The kitchen, bathrooms, and basement have tile.

I want to do wood-like tile when we re-do our floors. I love the look of real hardwoods but I think they're so impractical with kids and pets. We have laminate which I don't love the look of, but it's so easy to clean and super practical for our stage of life right now.

@azjax: Thanks! When laminate was first suggested to me, I wasn't a fan but after LOTS of research, we are really pleased!

We have hardwood, carpet, and laminate. The hardwood is my favorite for looks and feel, but the laminate is my favorite for durability and ease of cleaning. I don't like the carpet. I'd rather have wood or laminate and put down a big rug if you want the comfort of carpet. All this to say, I'd go for a nice laminate. The biggest downside to ours is that it is crazy slippery when wet, but it is about 15 years old and hasn't needed replacing or maintenance and still looks new.

We have engineered hardwood and I would not recommend it. We got it because it LOOKS like solid hardwood (because the top is hardwood) but supposedly it is more resistant to scratches and issues because of the way it is constructed. It's been a ton of issues for us. We've had a lot of splintering and just overall I don't feel like it has held up great. It still has scratches, and there isn't much we can do about it since it is engineered. In future homes I would get real solid hardwood or just do something entirely different I think.

My entire house is hardwood except for the basement which is "luxury vinyl" plank flooring.

We had engineered hardwood in our old home and I didn't love it. It seemed to dent easily. Our new home has hardwoods that we refinished. Love the hardwoods and advantage is that you can refinish them.

We have a mix: hardwood flooring upstairs and in a few rooms downstairs, tiles in the bathrooms, vinyl in the laundry room, one room with laminate, but the majority of our first floor is tiled. The solid hardwood upstairs is original and old and it's given us splinters! I'm not a fan.

We're planning on renovating our kitchen and taking down a wall. The flooring is something we've been forced to change because the adjacent room (that will be the extended kitchen) has a different type of floor. We ended up getting a commercial grade laminate. It's not installed yet, but I really like the low maintenance aspect of it.

Eta: I checked my flooring thanks to this post and realized they accidentally delivered 2 different colors!

We are also looking into replacing our floors. Our last place had real hardwoods and I am not doing it again. There were scratch marks everywhere from our cats and over a small bit of time the scratches actually became discolored as well. I think they are really impractical.

@Eko: We have hardwood in our kitchen and I honestly wouldn't do it again if I had the choice. It's in such poor condition just because of the scratches/dings (we didn't install it and it was done poorly). We are looking at having laminate installed in the living room/hallway that will look similar to it. I wanted something that was pretty indestructible because we have cats, dogs, and kids, and my husband didn't want to do luxury vinyl tile.

We have wood floors everyone in our home except for the time in our two baths. Even though they're pretty worn, I still think they look great. When our boys are older and less rough we will refinish them but they are continuous throughout each floor so you have to do it all. Otherwise it will be uneven and weird. Wood floors in the kitchen isn't ideal as they are really wearing but I have some large runners to help protect.

We have solid hardwoods throughout the house with a dark stain. They are holding up pretty well but we don't wear shoes in the house which I think helps signficiantly. We have definitely dinged them but they were finished onsite with a really good finish so they are doing well. Our old house, we had a lighter stain and cheaper hardwoods and they looked like crap all the time.

My parents have a high quality engineered and they are amazing. They are holding up super well with her 2 huge dogs and they wear shoes in the house. I might consider those if we ever built again. We are constantly worried about messing up our floors.

I have dark solid hardwood for almost 4 years now. We've definitely scratched them already! Oh well... I love the look though! I have tile in the kitchen and wood looking tile in the basement.

Current house - we've lived in for eight years; it has bamboo in living/dining/kitchen and carpet on stairs/halls/bedrooms. The bamboo does show scratches from the dog claws but only when the light hits; mainly it's worked pretty well as a durable high-traffic solution. I like having carpet in bedrooms/stairs so that's perfect.

Two years ago we redid our foyer/entry hallway and put in faux-wood laminate and I have been really thrilled with it. It looks so realistic, was very cheap to buy, and has held up to dog paws and muddy shoes. I wouldn't love having laminate in a living area since it does just feel a little bit cheaper than hardwood, but as far as appearance goes it looks very nice.

New house we just bought: Carpet in bedrooms/stairs/basement; dark hardwood in living/dining/kitchen. I personally swoon for dark hardwood so I'm highly stoked for this. I know the dark color will show dirt/fur more easily but that's why we have a roomba.

We have tile in the kitchen and bathrooms and carpet everywhere else. We'd like to put in hardwoods one day.