We understand your concerns about maintaining wood flooring throughout so many rooms. And enjoying a beautiful wood floor in your home can mean taking a little extra care. However, there are some easy ways you can look after your floor to improve its longevity. Here's a guide that covers the key things which can help to keep your wood floor in tip-top condition. The main things to be aware of are cleaning up spills quickly and and taking care with how much the floor is exposed to sunlight. Simple things like rugs/runners can help to protect wood in high-traffic areas and placing furniture strategically can help to shade. We'd agree that oiled is easier to touch-up. Although, you may want to consider that lacquered floors are more hardwearing. Here's a video guide to the benefits of each floor finish. I hope that helps but please feel free to get in touch with us at Woodpecker if you'd like any further advice. Best wishes, Hannah 02920 888223 | info@woodpeckerflooring.co.uk

Ribena Drinker, thats lovely! What brand/colour is it? So, we choose one of the brand new Karndean Van Gogh colours, and when it was down, the fitters finished late in the day. Next morning I was on my hands & knees to inspect it, and found a lot of random black dots that were clearly not part of the design. Also some flaws that were printing errors. Its on about 70% of the floor. I was obviously not happy. Company said they would replace the damaged areas - I said 'no chance' Karndean have accepted it is not correct and are reimbursing the store to lift it, and replace with another floor. I am not going to choose the same colour, so need an alternative!

Is does seem that the lesser known brands of LVT are the same thickness and same warranty as the major brands- the difference seems to be the colour choice and size of marketing budget. So as long as you like the colour choice with another brand then I think the cost saving is worth having. Separately the issue with herringbone over an expansive area is making the pattern meet up- generally a competent fitter will have no problems- I wonder if the issue is that you aren’t actually looking at LVT but instead floating floors (click together floors as opposed to stick down to the screed). Floating floors need to expand and over a large sized area can need an expansion strip adding which looks fine if you can add it to a doorway but looks odd in the middle of a large room.

We’ve had Karndean flooring in our bathrooms and the flooring that’s been in for about 20 years has started to shrink somehow, but still looks ok. Downstairs I’ve had porcelain wood look tiles in an en suite extension, but also have a highly insulated floor and underfloor heating, it’s great. However, in your circumstances I would certainly try to avoid a hard floor. As we get older, I am wondering if there are modern versions of cork tiles around, they were in a bathroom in our old house when we moved in and we left them when we converted the room into a utility room, they were comfortable under foot, practical, easily cleaned, warm and forgiving but a bit unexciting to look at.