Have been saving up to get tile for my house, but recently my wife came home with some laminate samples.
Honestly I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the “plastic” feel, it just felt cheap.
I am looking for some opinions based off experience. My wife said that she heard people saying they wished they had gone with the laminate instead of tile.
I know its easier to fix/install, and cheaper. Price isn’t my main concern though.
Anyone have strong feelings any way or the other?
Right now I would prefer tile, but I am not against it at all. I just feel like I would be disappointed walking around on “plastic” after I hyped myself up for tile.
We have tile in our laundry room, upgraded from laminate, and ripped up the carpet and tiled our living room floor with rustic plank tiles and the room looks a million times better.
We have laminate in our kitchen (previous owner) and downstairs bathroom - I prefer the tile or real wood floor feel (which we have in the upstairs hallway and all the bedrooms as well as the den) to the laminate. We installed the laundry room tiles and the sub-floor ourselves and it came out looking great. We had a professional install the tile in our living room.
Tile.
I suggest you use a dark colored grout. Even if you seal it, you will still get stains on the grout if it is light colored.
Pick the right tile, too. The ceramic tile we got is slick as hell when it is wet.
We still have laminate in the bathroom, but we have to put new down every 4-5 years. It’s not that hard to change out and she likes a color change here and there.
I also have bought and sold lots of houses over the years. Here are my thoughts:
If you house is a POS (or already going for the square footage of houses in your neighborhood) and you intend to move in the short term, laminate.
If you intend to keep the house for a bit and it is a quality house, tile.
If you intend to sell in the near term, and your house is below market in a good neighborhood, but still a house that will require a lot of remodeling, laminate, as the new owner will probably replace your tile and laminate is easier to remove and cheaper.
If intend to sell the house in the near term or even long term (and you are not in the $ per square footage cap of your neighborhood), and your house is in good shape and probably won’t be remodeled, tile.
Also, try not to have too many different kinds of floors in the house. It bothers buyers. I typically have the same porcelain tile or natural stone in wet and high traffic areas (e.g., kitchen, bath, den) and wood in the rest of the house.
By “laminate”, does that include engineered wood flooring options? Cause the high end engineered wood flooring that I have seen had me legitimately fooled when I was looking at houses, and I was used to real wood floors at my old house.
Right, I am curious if the OP is considering this as an option. From what I understand I think you can actually re-finish the engineered hardwood flooring if the top layer is thick enough.
