Downstairs flooring wwyd

We have an open plan kitchen and dining room separated by a square archway, the kitchen leads onto the hallway. We've carpeted the lounge and stairs since we moved here in January but will be using the same flooring through out the dining room, kitchen and hallway.

I originally said I wanted laminate through it all, but dh is concerned that it'll get badly scratched by the dining chairs and kids so wants to tile instead. My dads advised against not tiling as it too can get scratched and chip and is awkward to replace as oppossed to laminate which is much easier to lift off and put down.

In the kitchen and dining room we have mostly painted in this

http://m.diy.com/mt/www.diy.com/nav/decor/paint/interior-paint/one_coat_paint/-specificproducttype-neutral/B-and-Q-One-Coat-Matt-Sandstone-2-5L-10298583?&action=detail&un_jtt_redirect

with this on a feature wall in the dining room.
http://www.crownpaint.co.uk/colour/713/choc-chip.htm

The hallway is half magnolia, half the Crown choc chip, seperated by an oak stained dado. So the decor is pretty much the same throughout. Curtains and light shade in dining room are a dark brown and blind in kitchen along with a feature canvas and other accessories in the dining room are a Limey/olive green.

Wwyd tile or laminate? What have you found to be the pro's and cons of either. I'm swinging towards laminate still but I'm not too keen on laminate in the kitchen, in my head it looks odd for some reason Going round in circles here so thought about putting it on here for some advise. I would be grateful for some real life pictures too.

Thanks xx

HOw about Lino? Cheap and cheerful, easy to clean, wont chip or scratch, you can have underlay so its softish for when you drop thimgs or children bump... Otherwise, laminate, i think!

The last occupants had lino and it was ripped where the dining chairs would have been, it was a complete pita to remove as well. I think there's still some in the little cubby hole under the stairs where the gas meter is as dh gave in removing it.

Personally I would go for Laminate. We have tiles in our kitchen and where the odd plate/mug has got dropped it had very badly chipped (a couple of tiles have completely cracked - DF had to gritfill one back together), it now looks horrible and we are going to have to replace the whole thing.

Laminate is made much more hard wearing now, is easy to clean, and you can also get little cushion things to go on the bottom of chairs and furniture legs etc to stop scratches.

HTH's

tiles are really hard to do, you need to put down bore first and nail it every few cm's and the floor needs to be flatter than flat and they are cold as well.

Laminate I think looks cheap unless you go for one of the really good ones, I love the dark shades, we have manufactured wood which is top bit wood and the under bit what they use on laminate, if i had our time again I would probably go for Carmadean (sp) flooring, by the time we paid for fitting of our floors it would have been cheaper

Our apartment is tiled throughout. The tiles have been down coming up 7 years and the only mark on them is from Dh drilling through a piece of wood into the floor by mistake they have had just about everything you could think of dropped on them including rocks that the boys bring back from the beach I would say that laminate damages much easier as it dints when things are dropped on it

Laminate, we have it in our living room and dining room (dining room is a through room from kitchen) and they are beaten up day after day by the dog, scarlett (on her scooter, wheelie bug) me in heals, the dining table/chairs even our coffee table which is dragged between the two living room sofas - its a massive oak table... the floors are fine!

No scratches at all in the dining room and the only scratch in the living room was from a stone trapped in her scooter wheel...

Tiles are cold and very hard on the foot/bottom etc. Laminate has a light spring to it and is good at adjusting to the room temp.

I have tiles in my kitchen (original) and tho they are lovely they are cold and hard and laminate is just as easy to care for.

- just get a good laminate, the best you can afford and be sure to use a good underlay with it too x

.. and yes, i do agree in part with Kirsty, i had oak coloured laminate at my last house and i have a dark brown in this house, the dark brown is much nicer, richer and expensive looking and less 'common' ... but it does show up dust - not too bad if you dont mind sweeping every 1-2days.

our flooring takes some battering as well as you can imagine, it has a scratch where a stone got trapped under the kitchen door so there is an arc shaped scratch and just after we had it laid a heavy friend came in with hight heels on and left wee dent marks but they are't really noticable

We have tiles through out and if I had the choice I would go with something else. Things have been dropped on them and smashed and some tiles have chipped. With the change of the seasons we've found the tiles in the hallway have moved slightly and some have cracked down the middle And like others have said they are very cold.