Browse Forums Flooring & Floor Covering 1 Mar 24, 2009 3:20 pm ...if such thing exists. We are looking at replacing our floor, at the moment we have 20 year old pink carpet everywhere but the bathroom/loo/laundry and the kitchen (which has bad white vinyl). To explain the floor plan (we are having one drawn up at the moment) we have a 3x1 house, as you walk into the house the l-shape lounging and dining to your right then after a small entrance to the left is the family room. The kitchen is between the dining room and the family room (I hope that makes sense ). Its all open no doors as such but open door ways. Walk through the family room get to the hallway, three bedrooms are all next to each other and the wet areas are at the back. We also have two you boys, at the moment the family room is used as their playroom and the lounge has the tv. I am so unsure what to do about the flooring! We like carpet for its softness and warmness but the stains are a nightmare . We are considering wood floors but at the same time we are unsure about having it right through all the living areas as it might be too cold. Just curious what have people done and what they have found the best flooring to have with kids? My husband wants to go carpet again but I am thinking at least a hard floor for the entrance. Would love to have carpet in the lounge but a hard floor for the dining but wasn't sure if this would look odd as its an l-shape....can the joins be not that noticeable these days? At the moment we have a unattractive vinyl strip between the kitchen flooring and carpet. Any advice would be appreciated....hoping it makese sense, would be easier if I had the floor plan, hey. Re: Looking for suggestions for child friendly flooring... 2Mar 24, 2009 6:45 pm Hi mrsrusty! Your house sounds similar to our previous place! We installed a floating laminate floor (It was quickstep by uniclick). We found it to be fantastic. It was laid through the whole house, bedrooms included and was a pretty good investment. When i cleaned the floors after we had moved out i was very impressed with it, considering we had 2 pretty crazy active toddlers doing their worst in there for 6 years . It was quite warm underfoot, prob cause it was a laminate, and we found we didnt need rugs or anything to combat the cold. I have heard that the new types of vinyl planking like karndeen (sp?) are also a great choice for kid friendly flooring. Good luck with it, hope this helps! Re: Looking for suggestions for child friendly flooring... 3Mar 24, 2009 10:55 pm Hi Flissfloss thanks for the info. I googled both QuickStep and Karndean...have to say I am amazed at some of the Karndean photos looks so good for vinyl I have sent off for some samples and brochures. Will also check QuickStep out too. After todays effort of one water spill, two milk spills, the younger one putting his dinner all over the floor and my eldest one being unwell I think that we should go for a hard floor! Re: Looking for suggestions for child friendly flooring... 4Mar 25, 2009 4:45 pm As much as I hate to say it you could be better off with a non pourous hard floor if regualr spills are going to occur. The only problem is that many people who opt for hard floors inevitably purchase rugs to cover them because they are cold in the winter or are just uncomfortable. Unfortunately this means that all the spills will happen on the rugs. So you end up spending more money than you intended, and still have a spill problem. If you like carpet then buy carpet, but don't in this case go for wool, try a low, loop pile polypropylene which is not affected by food colours and is a lot cheaper. They get dirty of course, but a good carpet cleaner can deal with that once every so often. If the polypop gets damaged physically then you don't tend to panick over it as it was fairly cheap to start with. But don't expect it to last more than about 5 -10 years. But this can be good if you like to re-decorate frequently. Just something to chew on for you. cheers Col Nation For information on caring for wool and other carpet and upholstery go to www.woolsafe.com.au Re: Looking for suggestions for child friendly flooring... 5Mar 25, 2009 5:55 pm I believe there are carpets designed for stains. We are going for vinyl throughout the living areas (except beds and home theater) for three reasons... 1. Cheap 2. Very nice designs (everything from timber look to stones etc) 3. Kid proof - (soft, firm, water proof, nothing breaks when you drop things on it, easy to clean, always looks good) and we have three pets too, so we don't want those potential problems to annoy us either - hair, dirt, etc... hope that makes sense. We are going for a timber look floor - looks sensational! 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