I'd go with tile and buy extra for any additions/remodels. Linoleum has a stigma to it, notwithstnding the fact that it's come a long way from your momma's old sheet vinyl. It's still considered a low end product in many people's minds and won't help resale.

Oh here we go again.
Short answer: no it won't lower the value.
In an upscale nhood, the buyers will not see the benefits only see it as cheap plastic. In a starter nhood, people buying for their first time will not know the difference and those buying in a starter home and is not their first time probably wont care. Using premium flooring will give your house a competitive edge against those without and give a house somewhere in between starter and upscale a luxurious feel and good value vibes. If you're in a sellers market the you can put in whatever you want and it wont matter. And no it probably wont lower the resale value but the potential buyers may go with another house that has other flooring. In a buyers market using premium flooring cant hurt.

jubileej, from another post, I know your town. I have a friend that built there, total cost around $2 mil. They used linoleum tiles, laid on diagonal with 2 colors. It is in the kitchen and mudroom area. She also used carpet in her family room, instead of hardwood ... that is more of a negative to me than the linoleum in the kitchen!

Tile in the kitchen could also be a problem. In that area you can't go wrong with hardwood ... preferably throughout the house!

My personal opinion is that having linoleum install in a newly renovated kitchen will look cheap. If you don't want to waste money, than do ceramic tiles. But are you selling right away, or are you just thinking about the future?

If you're not thinking about selling until the near future, then I think you can install anything you want and worry about the resale later.

Enjoy your home.

Good luck

In a kitchen redo of a Victorian, we installed real lineoleum 12"x12" squares in eggshell white with black border and accent strips. The kitchen is what sold the house, but the lineoleum was appropriate for that house.
I dislike tile in a kitchen - hard to stand on - and wood warps when wetted. Wouldn't it be nice to find something with the look and give of cork, but without the maintenance? And no thanks to Pirelli rubber dot flooring.

Top-grade vinyl flooring is not cheap. I found that I could put in a wood floor for almost the same price. Twenty years later, that wood floor is still in great condition with only a screening-and-recoat once every five years.

I have to disagree with the poster who said that people buying for the first time won't know the difference and probably won't care. In my experience, young couples are the pickiest buyers of all. They don't understand how easy flooring is to change, they have no time, and they don't want "projects" in their new houses.

Fair or not, vinyl flooring screams "cheap" and/or "no style" to a large group of potential buyers. I would avoid it like the plague.

My vote: put a ceramic-tile-ready subfloor in, and put linoleum down on top.

Then, if you decide you need to when you are finally reaady to sell, you can take out the lino and put in tile. That messes up the ability to redo the room easily, but if you're selling, you won't care.

chuckr

I have both wood floors and cork tile (Wickanders) floors and there's no question that cork is easier to maintain. It's a very nice material for a kitchen floor and the OP might consider using it.

I'm sorry, but personally I would look very negatively at vinyl flooring in a high-end home. I would probably walk out. I hate vinyl flooring. I ripped it out of one of our last homes (a starter home) and put in select hickory flooring (and throughout the dining and living areas also). It's what sold the house.

we passed on a home with vinyl flooring in 2 of the baths..In hindsight, we should have realized that the cost to replace is insignificant, as the baths were perhaps 40sf each of floor space..

Well, vinyl isn't linoleum. As you can see, though, many people don't know that. As a matter of fact, this has been discussed...it really gets people excited somehow!

Here is a link that might be useful: linoleum discussion

it could have been linoleum,now that i think back,but i,perhaps wrongly, consider vinyl and linoleum the same thing..

Since they're not the same thing, there's no "perhaps" about it. Linoleum has become quite chic in certain circles because it's made mainly of layers of paper and linseed oil and thus considered a "green," building material. Vinyl, OTOH, is about as far from green as you can get because it's petroleum based.

They are both sheet materials and that's about all some folks see when they encounter either one. They figure they're both low status. That's the danger of using linoleum unless it's obviously a custom installation as described by posters above.

Too bad, really. To my mind, attractive, good-quality linoleum beats cheap, poor-quality wood and tile floors any day. I suspect you'll start to see more of it in upscale homes.

You must not have liked it, and that's what's important. I think linoleum would look bad in a bathroom, as it has looked bad in many a kitchen over the years. It has a certain look that is wonderful with some styles and just plain nasty with others. And very few of the good kitchen styles for linoleum would be good in a bath.

Linoleum HAS to be in the right place, or it's gonna look terrible.

Oh, on topic, I think wood would be just as easy or easier to remove (or partially remove) if a new owner wanted to knock out some walls. But I also think you shouldn't give so much consideration to the new owner. They won't be thinking of how hard it is to rip up the floor until it's too late and they've already bought it!

Lets not forget about floating floor (vinyl?) coverings. I have a 12x12 room for my pets which have this covering which looks like real wood planks. It is not cheap and is not suitable for all applications but makes a great covering over real hardwood. It installs with no glue and the pets can have their accidents. If you want to change it, the old covering makes a pattern for the new floor.

Floating wood floors have their problems. I have had friends complain that when they moved their refrigerator the floor buckled.

When buying, we also have to recognize improperly installed floors of any composition, which can devalue a house.

the reason these posts seem to go on and on is that there are probably quite a few people like me who laid down 10K for top of the line Solarion only to find out that I am cheap, have no taste, and will probably have to give away my half million dollar house should I ever need to move.

Not to mention those of us with REAL linoleum (which is made of cork, pigment, and linseed oil, not paper) who are trying to sell in a market where real lino isn't "in" yet and whose prospective buyers think it is vinyl!

You're right -- not paper. It's linseed oil, wood or cork dust and a burlap or canvas backing.

The colors of inlaid linoleum, unlike the more common patterned linoleu, go all the way through. Installing it involves cutting pieces of different colors and laying them in a pattern, which can result in a very beautiful floor. Of course, it's quite expensive to install.

Ok no matter what you think of linoleum.
Say D.trump gives you 50 mil and says go buy me a house that I'll like and I'll give you 4 mil for your troubles.

You go into 3 houses. One has linoleum & cork throughout the other two have tile and hw. The homes are identical in every other way. Knowing you're buying for the donald, you have to pick the 'best' or you'll be fired and wont get the 4 mil.

Well your prospective buyers are going to be picky like d.trump.

I would prefer you offer some sort of flooring credit (drawing a blank on the right word" so whoever can replace the lino with what they want.
I have a bad back and tile would make it scream. Plus I hate tile.
Personally I like lino as I'm a practical person who doesn't like to fussy clean. If lino made your home more affordable in that neighborhood I'd do it to get my foot in that neighborhood/size house whatever. It gives people some time to come up with the money to change it out later if they want. So sort of depends on how you'd price the house and how bad people want into your neighborhood. (having the littlest house in a big house development concept)
All that said - are you in the middle of a redo? The lino's not down? Then I'd probably go with hardwood despite it making it harder to open up a wall later. Your trying to sell the house as is and as someone said top quality vinyl's not that much cheaper.
Good luck,

qq

Why in the world did you lump ccrk in with linoleum? You clarly don't don't anything about it. The cost of good cork flooring is comparable to hardwood. It's considered an upscale flooring, although I'm sure you can find cork floors that use cheap materials and aren't propperly installed. But the same is true of hardwood and especially ceramic tile. It's a beautiful, natural and completely renewable material, and has unique attributes, such as beaing very easy on the feet. We are delighted with ours, as delighted as we are with the limestone and the slate foors we also have.

I think you hypothetical is pretty lame, BTW. The truly rich would turn up their noses at any house that was identical to another one (except for the flooring, which obviously can be replaced). At a minimum, they would demand a custom home.
Try to keep it real.

For The Donald i would buy the house with a mirrored floor.

And plentifully stocked with willing young blondes. Maybe a few brunettes.

I don't think anyone would ever accuse The Donald of excessive good taste.

I think it has a lot to do with the region you live in.
I love real linoleum floors and when I priced them out 5 yrs ago, they were 2-3X more expensive than average hardwood. The problem was, we lived in a newer traditional home in the burbs in a standard cookie cutter type neighborhood. Our typical buyer couldn't care less about green building and wouldn't appreciate the difference between lino and vinyl. It made more sense to do HD hardwood.
In this house, we're in another burb. This time in the Midwest/Western edge of the NE. Our house is a Georgian Colonial style built 12 yrs ago in a subdivision of custom built traditional homes. Our comps have hardwood on the first floor (sometimes tile in the kitchen and foyer) with all tile baths, and carpet in the bedrooms. I would love a checkerboard lino foyer floor, but to 99% of the population it would be seen as Armstrong vinyl commercial tiles like you see in hospitals. Vinyl is a huge no-no around here in this price range. And since it's an average market, buyers have lots of houses from which to choose. HW wins over vinyl (or what seems like vinyl) any day.
We'd have to be planning on living here for a long time to justify installing $13sf lino which reads as $3 sf vinyl to the average buyer.
BTW, cork has the same issues. If you live in a contemporary home on either coast, it may be different. But if you're woiried about resale, look at your target market.

Nope. Cork floors are routinely installed in upscale kitchen redos, and the designer industry views them that way.

Here, for example, is a link to a page from "Remodeling Magazine," which compares typical costs for a mirange versus an upscale kitchen remodel. Guess what kind of flooring the midscale remodel has? Guess what the upscale model uses for flooring to go along with the custom cherry cabinets, the stone countertops, the tile backsplahes, the buit-in fridge, etc, etc?

Now, you do have a point in that a lot of buyers shy away from any material they're not familiar with. If you're selling your house and you want to attract the largest number of buyers, you should absolutely install exactly what mass market builders are putting in new houses in your area and price range. For upscale houses, that currently would be tile floors all over for the Southwest and Florida, wood floors and luxury carpet for the Northeast, a combo of tile, HW and carpet for the Midwest, and "greener" flooring like bamboo and cork, along with tile, for the West Coast and NYC.

If you're planning to keep the house for some time, then you should put in what you want, expecting that you may want to do another update or not, depending on how things go.

Here is a link that might be useful: Major Kitchen Remodel

"Now, you do have a point in that a lot of buyers shy away from any material they're not familiar with"
That's exactly what I mean. I know cork is considered upscale to the trade, but to most buyers they are not a selling point.
Another example- We recently remodeled our kitchen and my #1 must have was inset door cabs. It's an expensive upgrade offered only by custom cabinetmakers. The vast majority of buyers couldn't care much less about full inset doors, so chances are we'll never recoup the added expense.
The same goes for concrete counters, BTW. The trade loves them, green builders love then, West coast contemporary design types love them, but to most people if it's not granite or quartz, it might as well be laminate.

I have Amtico light cherry planks in my kitchen and it is *gasp* vinyl! Not all vinyls are the same. I had sheet vinyl before and then vinyl tiles. Both were horrible, they were hard to clean and had hundreds of nicks. I'm not saying all sheet vinyl/vinyl tiles would be like this, but mine were.

The Amtico is wonderful. It is extremely easy to clean and after 3 years I don't have a single nick or tear. Water just beads up on it and it is comfortable to stand on.

My brother, who hates laminates, came to visit and commented on how nice my wood floor was. I didn't tell him.

This sounds like a ??? I posted a couple of months ago RE:installing a new fomica countertop in my '84 condo, for resale purposes only. The cabs aren't new, have that ugly ceiling with the florescents under plastic(not to be confused with duck under glass!),and fairly new almond appliances. The present countertops are the 6" square used in that era, but have gotten a bit dinged up thru the years, not to mention that tile isn't being used anymore. The one new upgrade i've made is wood flooring, and that includes the kitchen~painted the old oak cabs ivory, and added a few trims to jazz them up.

I was told I should do granite, which personally I dislike as it's *my* personal opinion, that's it's nothing more than a current trend. And how 'cheap' would that make the rest of the kitchen look anyway? My thinking was the formica would keep with the era and the rest of the condo, but the granite would bring 'new' into the equasion, and make it seem that I ran out of money and couldn't afford to replace the cabs, etc.

Needless to say, I haven't done anything yet, but am still leaning toward the formica. What I would like to use is a solid matte black. I think with the ivory cabs, and dark wood floor, the black would bring in a look of sophistication.

I would greatly appreciate opinions on this.

Incidentially, I have the original linoleum in the two full baths(PR is wood) and will be relpacing that with tile, but it wouldn't stop *me*(obviously) from buying. Could be that i'm older and have a little more patience. The younger buyers want everything done so they don't have to be inconvienced~move-in ready. ;o)

patty_cakes

"The truly rich would turn up their noses at any house that was identical to another one "

Yeah especially those high rise condos.

Take a chill pill and relax on your cork floors, as the point I repeatedly try to make on this subject is that the timeless elegance of wood floors, also renewable, is what people think is hot. This has nothing to do with what I think but with what buyers think. The same can be said about granite countertops. I don't think I'd like them in the kitchen because you can't disinfect them supposedly but if I was planning on selling the house sometime in the next 10 years the you bet I'd consider it as it's a widely publicized upscale feature that will make the house a better value than comparables.

Quirky, it's my belief that if the rest of the kitchen isn't up-graded, what's the point of expensive granite?

Because of the uncertainty of the market, I probably won't be listing for at least a year, or until the market changes. ;o)

patty_cakes

patty_cakes, I agree with you that the granite would probably just point out other "problems" with your kitchen. Keeping it all in one era would be better.

In some places *anything* that's out of date is called "retro" or "mid-century modern" and then it's cool! Even if it doesn't really fit those design classifications, putting that spin on it seems to make things sell.

So just call it a retro kitchen and you're good as gold. :-)

We recently bought a house with vinyl in the baths and laundry room. We had the laundry room done over in slate so we could put in the w/d but are keeping the vinyl in the baths for now. It's not hideous and is in good shape so we'll just replace it later.

Wood isn't renewable in the same way cork is. Wood require trees to be cut down, and maybe (or maybe not) they'll be replanted for harvest many years later. This particularly an issue with tropical hardwoods, which are disappearing rapidly.

Cork is harvested once evey seven years without destroying the tree. It will live and produce many more crops.

Cork has some good qualities (comfort underfoot, warmth,, durability, easy upkeep) thatmake it a great product for flooring, qualities that wood floors don't have. Plus, it's truly a renewable resource. It's worth considering for people who want these qualities and aren't remodeling to get their houses on the market right away.

As I said above, anyone remodeling to sell in the near future would be wise to put in what's most popular in their market niche. But that certainly doesn't apply to 10 years from now. There's no telling what will be "hot" then, but it's almost certain it won't be what's hot now.

I've made my decision~i'll be using the black formica. I'm going from the standpoint that it will be new, and anything is better the tired looking tile that I have now.

If a prospective buyer walks in and says, 'it's not granite', 'it's so dark', or my god, it's FORMICA'!, at least it will be NEW! We're not talking a ton of counterspace here, so a re-do would not be an expensive option for a buyer, but the 'seller' is cheap.LOL

Now...has anyone ever used HD for countertop installation? This isn't something a handyman could do, is it? Measurements have to be very specific. TIA

Maybe i'll start a thread on the subject. ;o)

patty_cakes

Oh guys! I am so embarrassed! But this only confirms what I expected - that I am having trouble with the GW search engine recently. So ignore the new post on the same topic (put in marmoleum) - and thanks for all the input. It is way helpful!

Chispa, thanks for the specifics. Maybe we can meet at another NE gathering?

That was helpful???

:)

You're a good sport!

If you're concerned about renewable materials, you can use bamboo wood floors. Bamboo is actually a grass not a tree and the wood is useful for a number of things.

If the kitchen is totally out of style I don't know what to tell you other than maybe it will need to be redone. *It depends* If it's modern but you're you need a competitive edge, using the wood flooring will help sell the place.

Corian is supposed to be nice countertop material from what I hear. Don't know much about it. If granite wasn't in my budget, I'd rather have the European butcher block or tiled countertops instead of laminated particle board. Maybe in my next house.