Thread: Wood-look floor tiles

I have seen them used on a few projects.

There are some good ones that look fairly natural, and others that look cheap and nasty.

They certainly have improved over the years. All the benefits of tiles with the look of timber. It is somewhat odd as the surface is a long way removed from the product it is trying to replicate however the functionality may out way this.

I think it looks great. I really like it.

My sister in law put them into a house she built a few years ago. They were darker than in your pic. Practicalities of tiles with timber look. Apart from the grout lines, I think they look better then the laminate floating floor boards that everyone likes to use. They'll also last longer.

First ~ Bamboo and dogs are not a good combination. Their claws tend to put tiny dents in the bamboo. A friend put it in his house and because of the dog he hated it. He finally sold the house to get away from the floor. (But that was him.)

Second ~ I've done a lot of dumb things in my life but laminate flooring is the worst. It is what you got. Scratch it? It is what you got. Needs refinish? It is what you got. Because it is smooth every scratch and dent shows.

Third ~ Ceramic tile simulating wood is probably the best modern solution. I did drop a Philips screwdriver onto some ceramic tile. And just like when you drop a chisel, the screwdriver fell point first. The length of the fall was a bit higher than my waist. That fall left a small "X" in the ceramic tile.

As we change out any flooring I am torn between the ceramic wood grain and a commercially prestressed oak. With the prestressed oak, most dings, scratches and dents don't really show. Also, if the oak is left natural and only covered with floor polyurethane the floor can be spot refinished invisibly. But you will always be constrained to the light color of poly over oak.

I've just gone through this and decided to go with engineered spotted gum flooring. The wood effect tiles look good, but in the end they are just ceramic tiles and they have the feel of tiles. If you are OK with cold and hard and just want the look of wood they may be for you. Here's a virtual walk through of a ceramic tile wood look floor in a display house.

I believe it was an expensive job to lay the tiles to get the herringbone done right.

While looking at other options a couple of the people in flooring shops told me they were discontinuing carrying bamboo. Apparently the seasonal movement in the engineered bamboo flooring is significant and they have had lots of complaints.

There are a lot of other engineered flooring options that use natural wood veneers and not a bamboo substrate. The cheapest seem to be various types of European Oak, stained and wire brushed for a rustic look. We decided we wanted something that looked local not European.

Vinyl plank wood effect seems to getting good reports, but I still have memories of 1970's vinyl sheet flooring that suffered from surface damage, so I wasn't prepared to try that option, but I think it looks good and possibly better than the ceramic tile. There is another hybrid offering that appears to be something like a photographic reproduction of wood on a slate substrate and supposedly hard wearing. In the end if you want the look of wood why not just use wood? Accumulated patina is part of the character of anything wooden.

I think any flooring has to be considered a consumable item. Carpet probably has the shortest life expectancy, followed by cheap tiles, I've had reports from friends that even porcelain tiles don't last more than about 10 years. Solid timber on real floor joists lasts generations if you can live with dings and don't feel impelled to refinish it every few years. For a wood on concrete slab option I'm hoping engineered timber flooring has a life expectancy that falls somewhere between the worst and the best. I'm also somewhat won over by the argument that the face veneer used on engineered flooring is a conservative use of an increasingly scare select resource.

Franklin,
That herring bone pattern overwhelmed me. The crafts people that installed that were true experts.

In the old days it was solid timber, then engineered timber started to emerge which was a fairly thick natural timber attached to an engineered (ply) backing.

The engineered boards could be sanded and refinished like a solid timber floorboard. A solid timber floorboard can only be sanded down to the thickness of the “groove” part of the tongue and groove - and this thickness was basically the same as the engineered board.

In a rush for cheaper products then veneered boards came in, with the veneer being so thin it couldn’t be sanded. Now it has come to laminates which are the next step down (often on mdf backing). Sure they will oil fashionable for a while until they start to look really bad, needing to be ripped up and started again.

Personally I don’t think that a floor should be considered a consumable.

That herring bone pattern overwhelmed me... I just about threw up

If you want to go French Oak, don't be cheap, forget herringbone and do it properly...
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BTW that looks like a workbench in the background. Maybe the floor in my new workshop should be .....