I put in 5mm vinyl click plank from LL in a stone pattern in my kitchen. the thickness does make it a bit tougher to cut so any advantage that the thickness has in making it lock together is balanced by it being harder to make cuts (assuming score and break with a blade and not power tools). Overall, it does take a bit of time and patience to get it installed well. In my installation, seams are all very tight with no signs of any separation after 8 months, despite all this ridiculous cold weather no doubt causing more contraction than what I would normally ever see. Mine is on concrete slab so I don't have experience with it on wood subfloor. Overall, I am happy with it. Note that the surface wear layer will scratch. You should still put protective pads on furniture, etc. It is much more resistant to gouging from dropping heavy stuff on it unlike the cheap sheet vinyl I've had in the past (and worlds better in this regard then laminate and wood). These characteristics may not carry over to all the other 5mm. LL private labels from multiple manufacturers, even stuff they label as being in the same series. In getting stone style click vinyl samples, I noted that they came from at least two different manufacturers. When I've looked at their laminate samples, I've found at least four different manufacturers (and again at least two were supposed to be the just different patterns in the same exact series), some were clearly better quality than others despite being the same price.

desertsteph, my apologies for missing your questions for so long! The vinyl floor tiles were Lowes' Cryntel brand, style name was Italiastone (corrected name) Travertine. It didn't really look like travertine per se, it was just a pleasant mottled beige that went really well with the cabinets. They look a little pink in the picture because of the camera. There's a pretty good range of styles/colors in the Cryntel line; although Lowes doesn't have every color stocked in every store they can get any of them. IMO the rigid, mottled, lightly textured, matte-finish ones like Italiastone and Eurostone are much nicer looking than the thin, floppy, shiny ones. I just checked the Lowes website and they're up to a whole $1.24 per square foot from the 99 cents we paid. :-) The faucet was the Ashfield from Price Pfister - got it for a pittance on eBay. :-) I LOVED IT. (I may use the bathroom version in the half bath because it's just so darn cute.) We lived with it for about 5 months while the house was on the market. The high arch was terrific for things like sheet pans and big pots that were hard to fit underneath a lower conventional faucet. Some people complain about having more splashing with high-arched faucets but we didn't have any problems with that at all. This house has the regular kind of horizontally-oriented faucet and I don't find it anywhere near as convenient - when there's a bit of spare cash I may well pick up another Ashfield on eBay and switch them out. Some people think Price Pfisters are just terrible, but I've had a few (one of the few positive things about moving so many times is that I've gotten to experience many different products and brands! or so I keep telling myself LOL) and have found them to be just fine.

I'm the OP. We just returned from visiting a couple more flooring stores (we've now visited four flooring stores in total). One place today was absolutely excellent as far as having a long-time salesperson/owner who really knows her products and their uses in various applications. In a situation like ours she highly recommends using luxury vinyl sheet with a glue down installation. It will adapt to minor dips in the floor, it is all vinyl so could withstand possible water incursion, it won't have potential dirt in the edges like tiles would if there is a water event in the basement, it is durable (she showed us some great examples of what can be done to it without harming it), and it is reasonably priced (not cheap but not as pricey as many other options we've seen). I liked what I saw in the Mannington line wood-replicas because it is not cheesy looking, and it has an aluminum oxide coating to prevent damage to the floor. This floor would cost about 50% of what a marmoleum floor would cost us. Hope this helps anyone else who is facing the same dilemma we are facing about flooring.

There are several things that must be considered. I like to use the concept of MOST amount of flooring that follows the general rule. If you have a single room (lets say 10' x 10' = 100sf) and then the REST of the space is much, much larger (say 600sf), you would want to try to keep the MAJORITY of the flooring (600sf) sticking to the rule of "longest length = long run of the room". The other question with hardwood becomes wooden subfloors. Sigh. Wooden subfloors over joists change the equation. Hardwood floors must be run perpendicular to the joists - no matter how big/small the rooms are. So...without knowing your set-up, without knowing your subfloor, without knowing the direction of sunlight, without knowing very much of anything about your situation...the majority of the home should follow the rule of thumb. Unless other factors contribute to changing this. Which I can't tell because there isn't enough information. And just for fun...diagonal is always an option = 15% waste and a more expensive labour bill.