The new luxury vinyl is remarkably convincing. I wouldn’t worry about it too much in terms of resale.
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I am not a fan of gray floors or rustic floors, or luxury vinyl floors, except in laundry rooms, craft rooms and such.
We like wood floors, finished in place. We have had wood floors in two homes, for decades, with a dog and with multiple kids riding plastic wheeled things. Floors held up beautifully. Dog dishes were on a door mat/placemat type thing. Kitchens (active cooks) and powder room also had no issues, even after a flooded toilet when just kids were home (cleaned up fairly promptly).
We hired an interior decorator by the hour to advise on some things when we bought a lake house and redid the interior. One of our questions was a suggestion whether to go light or dark on wood floors. I thought I would like light. (Cabinets we installed are fairly light wood, alder I think with no stain, just finish). She suggested that dark floors make a room feel more grounded, but there is no right answer. We ended up with stained in place medium dark floors all throughout, with some area rugs. We have many many windows. We put luxury vinyl in laundry room and unheated 3 season porch.
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Just wanted to weigh in from personal experience. Apologies if this is repetitive. I confess I did not read every post.
Go with what you like above all else. But, since you are asking for opinions.
Size of plank matters if you are looking for a more trendy look — these days wider planks are more in style than narrow planks.
Matte or naked look finishes are also more trendy than glossy finishes.
Color matters when it comes to hiding dust — darker finishes will look dirty faster. Lighter, blonder wood will camouflage dust much better than dark floors, so you can go longer between cleaning.
Narrow maple planks in a yellow, gold or honey finish can be reminiscent of a gymnasium floor. Once you see the similarity, it is impossible to unsee it. We have them in our current home. Ours tend to easily scratch with the slightest provocation, which I understand is unusual. Could be the finish.
Our former home had natural color, red oak flooring. Never scratched, hid dust so well and still looked like new after 15+ years, withstanding two energetic young children and two even more energetic dogs.
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In our experience, wood in the kitchen is indeed a double-edged sword. When we moved in 15 years ago, the house already had dark hickory-stained wood in the kitchen/living/dining, which we wouldn’t have chosen but just kept. Over time, we had 3 separate incidents involving water that caused varying levels of damage to the wood - a dishwasher leak that flooded several sq ft and caused slight buckling that never completely went away; an under-sink plumbing leak that led to replacing several boards; and finally a slow drip leak from the back of the fridge that wasn’t caught for several days and ended up soaking the plywood subfloor through the entire kitchen and dining. Over time, the subtle shifting of the foundation tends to open slight cracks between some of the boards, so water finds its way down through the floor and soaks the subfloor.
BUT…when we had to replace the floor after that most recent disaster, we went back with new wood instead of tile or LVP. It looks amazing, and it’s much easier on your feet and back than tile. We looked into cork as a water-friendly alternative to wood, but we everything we found looked cheap and fake - as if you were trying to pass off your Not-Wood as Wood.
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My SIL & BIL built a house about 18 mons ago. My daughter about 16 at the time remarked that the interior of the house was all monochrome. Grey’s and white everywhere with dark hardwood floors. The house gets plenty of natural light but just no color anywhere.
We redid our master bath. One tip I would give to people that might not think about it is heated floors. Those are super nice to have. They are set on a timer and work great.
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I will second the heated bathroom floors.
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Another vote for heated bathroom floors!
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Add another one! Not that prohibitively expensive to do if the floor is being replaced anyway.
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We have natural white oak floors that gave the same finish they put on floors at shopping malls, making them very durable. We opted to put sheet vinyl in bathrooms and kitchen (we have washer and dryer in kitchen abd have had it overflow a few times).
My sister had hardwood in her kitchen and loves it but has had to redo it a few times due to leaks. The second time she redid it, she put hardwood floors though out her ground floors except tile for bathroom. She left carpet in 2nd floor. She does use large area rug in TV room because her grandkids use it as a playroom a lot. She loves her wood floor kitchen— I love my vinyl floor kitchen.
Our local public library just renovated and installed Luxury Vinyl Tile planks throughout. It looks very much like real wood—
very very nice. I couldn’t tell and asked the librarian (they had to remodel because it flooded and I was curious whether they’d use wood with the history of glooding).
When we built our house in 1993, most people were building with hardwood floors in kitchen / hallways.
We’ve been happy with ours, with these caveats
- NO DOGS … I’d be worried about scratches etc
- we wisely followed advise to put small rugs at sink and fridge (we have water/ice dispenser
- we refinished twice over the years
- we did have one bad incident from water with drain cleaner leaked out from pipe issue under sink… left some dark marks (now mostly faded) under storage container lids because we were not able to clea it up immediately.
We have hardwood (a medium oak color) everywhere except for the bathrooms (tile). Love the hardwood in the kitchen area - much better than tile for me. We did the upstairs conversion recently and opted for wider planks than the downstairs.
We are planning to redo our sunroom area early next year and are debating about using LVP. One concern I have is that our current eat-in kitchen area has hardwood and has faded significantly when compared to the rest of the downstairs since it gets plenty of light. So, don’t want to do hardwood in the sunroom. Any ideas on LVP in a bright sun filled room? Will it hold up well?
I have LVP tiles in my current sunroom that I inherited from a previous owner. I’m planning on ripping it up. There are places where it has discolored. I’m planning on replacing with ceramic tile.
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We have LVP in our sunroom. The room is “sunny” by late morning through the afternoon and into the evening until the sun goes down. We do have an area rug in there. It’s probably 10+ years old. No discoloration on the exposed parts (would see it when I pull the rug corners up.
If you get a lot of sun in that room and live in a cold area, I’d recommend porcelain tile: pretty cheap and has high thermal load (to capture sunlight), won’t discolor like vinyl, easiest to clean. They come in pretty much any look these days: marble, slate, concrete etc, and don’t really come off as “fake” when they imitate other stone materials since the feel and temperature conductivity are the same. We’ve loved our tiles and look good as new after 14 years…
I love the look of the light hardwood floors. But when we remodeled 5 years ago we went with dark (espresso) wide plank hardwood floors in the living room, halls and bedrooms and a matching wood look tile in the kitchen and dining area. We have a large black lab that sheds like crazy. The dark floors do a great job of hiding the dog hair. we occasionally trip over the dog if we aren’t careful because he blends into the floors.
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Great suggestion! Make sure your floors are color-matched to your pet. 
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Actually tile too. We chose the tile for our entryway and mudroom. The builder was going to receive and install it. He asked me what color and I said “dirt color”. He thought I was kidding. Our tile is the same color as the sand and dirt that would get dragged in the house. The only way you can tell it’s dirty is that it feels gritty.
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When friends of ours had 3 kids at home, they took sample tiles for their kitchen home and tried out lots of mess them up options (dirt, sand, etc). They wanted the one that could hold up against the kids.
I have hardwood floors, and my son’s dog, about 40 pounds, has scratched them. Now we tend to throw things for her in the kitchen, where we have tile.
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So interesting about dogs and scratched floors. I wonder if it has to do with the finish - like maybe a glossy finish scratches more??? We have never had our wood floors scratched. It’s true our dogs have not exceeded 35 pounds or so but we do play with them inside and there is some hard running on the floors.
I personally don’t have the love for tile. A room or two sure. When I open a home listing and there is tile galore I swipe past that home.
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I’m with @abasket - not a big fan of tile (except bathrooms and laundry room). And haven’t had issues with dogs scratching the floors. Our dogs (and grand-dog) have all been beagles so not big dogs.
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