Amtico, Karndean etc?

Soldato
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We are moving into a new place and want some flooring in the hallway and day room (man cave) and thinking of Amtico or Karndean type stuff. Ive had engineered oak before and I loved it, I don’t think I’d have it in a hallway again tho…

There seem to be loads of similar products so any recommendations or ,equally important, ones to avoid!?
 
We have Karndean, think the colour/range was black knight. It was actually one of the lower end ranges but the one we preferred the look of so managed to save some cash there!

From memory it was around £3.5k for ~60m'2 including leveling off the floor as best they could (it's an old house with insanely wonky floors so making it full level would've stopped some doors opening at the other end of the room!)

I'm a big fan of it, any issues and you can spot replace individual pieces which you can't do with most flooring.
 
Got Amtico going in tomorrow into 2 en-suites and a bathroom. I love the stuff. I already have it done throughout the ground floor of my new build.

Personally I find the feel is much better than laminate, tiles or wood.
 
Why wouldn’t you have the oak again?

I loved it, just think in a hall way its not ideal - if it gets wet on any joins etc you can get it going black and the colour varied room to room depending on the amount of sunlight it was exposed to. Some of it went very yellow/golden and that wasn’t the colour I wanted/choose!

I did really like it but i think some of these other ones offer products that are just more resilient in the real world and don’t cost anywhere near as much!
 
We have Karndean, think the colour/range was black knight. It was actually one of the lower end ranges but the one we preferred the look of so managed to save some cash there!

From memory it was around £3.5k for ~60m'2 including leveling off the floor as best they could (it's an old house with insanely wonky floors so making it full level would've stopped some doors opening at the other end of the room!)

I'm a big fan of it, any issues and you can spot replace individual pieces which you can't do with most flooring.

Doesn’t sound too bad a price, local or national company!?

Got Amtico going in tomorrow into 2 en-suites and a bathroom. I love the stuff. I already have it done throughout the ground floor of my new build.

Personally I find the feel is much better than laminate, tiles or wood.

Its pretty much the ground floor of new build we are looking to deal - high traffic area so something that looks good but can stand up to abuse and not worry too much about is what we are after!
 
We have Amtico in the bathroom and en-suite and LG in the kitchen, cloakroom and hallway.
The LG is the deco 55 with a bevel edge which looks and feels great underfoot.
 
Doesn’t sound too bad a price, local or national company!?

Local guy, he's done some pretty big local businesses though like Booths supermarket so we were quite happy. He was considerably cheaper than a lot of other local suppliers though, guess maybe because he didn't run a shop front so had less overheads.
 
We are moving into a new place and want some flooring in the hallway and day room (man cave) and thinking of Amtico or Karndean type stuff. Ive had engineered oak before and I loved it, I don’t think I’d have it in a hallway again tho…

There seem to be loads of similar products so any recommendations or ,equally important, ones to avoid!?

The big question is textured or non textured.

Current home has amtico light grey oak LVT but is a smooth finish.

Our last home had a Polyflor Camaro vintage timber LVT with textured wood effect finish. This stuff was also very durable, still looked like new after 3 years.

I prefer textured.

In terms of brands for LVT avoid the budget brands and ranges and even the main brands budget range with thin wear layers.

As always, it's all in the prep and quality of self levelling compound work by the fitter and of course the final fit/cut in.
 
I’ve got amtico signature basket weave in my lounge and hallway. I bought it because it’ll outlast myself (and I’m 28) and it won’t require sanding/oiling in future and its water proof (or at least deals with moisture better than wood). It feels great and looks great.
 
Why wouldn’t you have the oak again?

We have beautiful natural smoked and oiled Boen Oak Jasper on our ground floor throughout the house. As nice as it is it's a PITA :p Needs oiling every month or so with carnuba wax and oil and marks quite easily. The oven cleaners trashed a few boards with the chemicals luckily it's fairly easy to replace being click lok engineered

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We have beautiful natural smoked and oiled Boen Oak Jasper on our ground floor throughout the house. As nice as it is it's a PITA :p Needs oiling every month or so with carnuba wax and oil and marks quite easily. The oven cleaners trashed a few boards with the chemicals luckily it's fairly easy to replace being click lok engineered

How does that work then? I always thought click lok would've involved skirting off, then work from the end of the room lifting all the planks to replace one in the middle?

This is what i like about Karndean, we had a painting fall off and the glass smashed and ruined about 3 pieces, the fitter just came round, pulled them up and then re-glued the news ones in place.


EDIT - Also, no thanks to monthly waxing!
 
I oil my engineered oak less than once per year. It's held up well for 5 years or so.

Certainly wouldn't stand for waxing every month!
 
How does that work then? I always thought click lok would've involved skirting off,

Destroy the board you want to replace then you can by force click it all in, the bit we changed was in the kitchen so plinths off quite easy.

And yes the oiling is painful, okay if you have a housekeeper :p which we don't
 
We got mid-range Karndean put down, about a year ago, so far very happy with it, both as tiles and planks, so to speak. The trick is the prep and the installation as has been mentioned though, don't skimp on that. Ours went onto a level concrete floor and a layer of rubber levelling compound. we used to have engineered boards and the difference here is the noise, there is none, no creaks, no foot noise etc.

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Karndean herein a small en suite 1mx1m. Laid it myself, bit of ply then mapei levelling compound following instructions.

I've got my main bathroom to do next and will just get some thick 18mm ply as my base and not bother with the levelling compound.

I Got a few quotes over 800 quid for just laying the two bathrooms let alone levelling them, got all the tiles, glue, levelling compound etc for just over 200quid. Took about 2 hours after measuring up multiple times even though I've got about 3x as many tiles I need. It really is easy to put down.
 
bit of a thread hijack, but any reconmendations for LVF for an older house? So floor boards underneath, also looking for a range that would offer a herringbone or parquet style but then also have matching traditional planks in colour.
 
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