I have this thing with floors | Laminate Flooring

Ever since we changed the flooring in our old house bathroom and kitchen, and I saw what a huge difference a new floor can make, I’ve had this little thing with floors. My Pinterest feed is often full of gorgeous wooden floors and beautiful patterned tiles. You’ll often find me snapping photos of beautiful floors I see whilst I’m out and about.

Thankfully our new house already had tiles down in the kitchen and utility {makes clearing up with four kiddos so much easier}. I would love to take up the carpet from our entire downstairs and have beautiful wooden floors instead. Unfortunately, given the state of the floorboards {and the fact some rooms have concrete floors!} I think that would be an awful lot of work and cost far too much money.

Searching for an alternative, I’ve been looking at laminate flooring. I’m amazed by just how realistic it can look. I think it could make a great cost-effective way to replace all the carpet. It’s also quicker and easier to lay than it would be to strip floorboards, sand them and polish them. Also for the bathroom, it is probably a better option than open floor boards as water can’t seep between the gaps {and given how much my kiddos splash, the floor often resembles a swimming pool when they’ve finished!}

I think this a beautiful oak laminate flooring would look perfect in our living room – I can see it complementing our leather sofas really well – a sheepskin or two on the floor and it would be gorgeous and cosy looking.  Laminate is a fantastic cost-effective alternative to wooden floors, and it is also easy to clean and maintain. With four kiddos in the house, a floor that is washable is absolutely essential, especially in the kitchen or playroom, where the floor gets covered in food, paint, glitter and mud from the garden every day. I’m totally sold on laminate flooring being the ideal choice for a family home – it covers the practical aspects that I need as well as still ticking my ‘style’ requirements.

I’d also really love to replace the carpet in our playroom. The girls do a lot of crafting in there and I’ve spent too much time scrubbing paint out of the carpet! one concern I had was that vinyl flooring wouldn’t be tough enough to withstand all their playing/gymnastics/crafting. I came across some wood effect vinyl flooring at Floors Direct, which is no ordinary vinyl – it is a luxury, durable and very strong vinyl flooring known as LVT, so could be just what I am looking for! LVT comes in a range of styles, from warm terracotta, strongly contrasting black and white to even wood effect, making it easy to fit into any room/style needed.

One thing that had put me off laminate was my vision of it looking ‘fake’ and not as aesthetically pleasing as the wooden floors that I have been lusting over – it seems that laminate flooring has had something of a makeover in recent years, and honestly, I don’t think at a glance you’d be able to tell the difference. While laminate might be a little colder than carpet on your feet, if you add a few rugs in key areas [such as in front of the sofa where your feet will rest] then cold toes won’t be a problem!

I can imagine already how fantastic my downstairs would look with one of these beautiful laminate floors to replace the sea of grey carpet that we have at the minute. I’m also looking forward to no longer having to get down on my hands and knees to scrub stains out of carpet!