Yes, that makes sense. I did wonder. The only reason I was considering it was because it's its own floor, so you wouldn't really notice they were different as there's nothing else to compare it to on that floor unless you were paying close attention to the flooring on the other floors of the house if that makes sense?

You think it would be nicer to have all stone tile on the childrens floor like the one pictured above? Or maybe do the dressing room and playroom in tile but leave the bedrooms in wood (vs doing all the rooms in wood tile)? The only issue is that the playroom doesn't have any windows, so I worry that stone tile combined with no natural light will make an already dark room feel really horrible...

Ah thanks! I think it looks quite realistic, honestly--the planks are 120cm long like a normal plank and click together like real wood, so no obvious grout lines or anything. So you'd put that in the kids bedrooms, dressing and playroom? Even though we've got wood in the main floor and master?

No it's not LVT as it does have grout, but the gaps are so small you don't see them if that makes sense? I'm really excited about the stone tile. Hopefully will be as good as the photo... it's a brand new collection so I haven't gotten to touch it yet!

Your analogy to outdated carpet is dead on: wood-look tile won’t stand the test of time in homes. And carpet is cheaper and easier to replace.

Your description of real wood clicking together is confusing. When we had ours installed, it came as a large pile of t&g boards, which were hammered together, nailed down, sanded and then finished. Your photo looks more like an engineered product of some sort.

The preference today is for hardwood, which doesn’t include wood grain tile. If wood is not in your budget, then why not carpet your kids’ rooms? It will be soft, quiet and easily replaced in the future.

We have oak throughout our house, including the entry, kitchen, powder room, stairs and bedrooms. It flows seamlessly and is a timeless look.

Read through threads here where folks have bought houses with assorted flooring and are trying to unify things. To stick to your budget, you could install inexpensive sheet vinyl and replace it with hardwood when budget permits.

Carpet the kids' floors except in bathroom. It's quiet, easy to replace, soft when they fall, and will not look like 2012 in a few years.

Don't mix tiles. It always looks like you ran out of one. Wood tile is already on its way out in some areas. Unless allergies are an issue, carpet those areas. Lvt is also a good choice for a kids area as it is easy care, soft and easier to replace.

Yes, I do get the point about multiple flooring types and the fake flooring issue. If we don't do the wood tile there, we'd probably do the same stone tile in the playroom and dressing room and still go for wood in the bedrooms. I really dislike carpet because it holds all sorts of allergens and also doesn't fare well with young children (we have 3 under 5!).

Yes, sorry, the flooring is engineered oak. The subfloor is cement and it's being installed in the open plan living/dining/kitchen (where there will inevitably be some moisture in the kitchen), so we decided to go engineered.

The house we're renting during the build has a mixture of wood and wood tile--wood in the family bedrooms and living area, then on another floor there's wood tile in the aupair room and guest room. I had no idea until we'd been living here for a few weeks because it was so realistic! It's dead practical if I'm honest, and it's the reason I even started to consider the wood tile in the first place.

I second the idea of nixing mixing real wood with fake wood tiles.

If you favor tiles, then use something which appears to be what it is--tile which looks like tile!

If budget is a big issue, have you considered LVT everywhere?

Good luck with your project!

I'm using real hickory hardwood for my floors, and while I love the look of wood tile and could use it in my laundry room and entry way before hitting the natural hickory, I backed off. Same thought as you....I don't see mixing wood tile with natural wood. I would also stick with something that looks like tile. On the other side of the coin, in the overall big scheme of things (mortgage, loan, whatever), will $3000 make a ton of difference in your payment if that's what you're doing? Something to ponder....

Thanks for the opinions everyone. Colbran unfortunately we went beyond our mortgage a while ago so all these little extras are coming out of pocket in cash. I think we’re going to cough it up though and just do real wood in the bedrooms and playroom and do tile in the landing and dressing. Will save maybe 1500 but at least that’s something!

The install costs for wood are considerably more, annoyingly. It's because it's a cement subfloor which means they have to use glue, and that apparently costs a lot.

That makes no sense cocoyates. My floors are also concrete with engineered hardwood glue down. It's still less expensive than doing the tile floor in the bathroom.

I have heard that tile install costs vary considerably geographically right now. Interesting though, I have heard it was cheap in FL (where cpartist is). Our install costs have doubled in the last 8 years for tile. We are paying near $10 a sqft for labor when $5 was pretty typical. Hardwood is like $2. You could glue down a subfloor and nail to it for far less than tile.

I am building the least tiled house you have even seen.....

Most tile masons here are hispanic and they moved when construction was light and for some reason, they aren't coming back....

I did put down wood look tile in the kitchen, with wide plank pine in the rest of the house (except bathrooms, with tile look tile). Why? Pine is soft wood, and with pets, wood don't seem like a good idea there.

But... I have the wood look tile run perpendicular to the real wood,and I picked a design and color that doesn't remotely look like I'm trying to match, but it does look complementary. It helps that my kitchen is semi, not fully open. (I wouldn't do this in a true open plan.)

I would say, in today's throw away society, it is good you don't plan on putting down the less expensive which is to you undesirable, throughout your house, just to have everything the same, just to rip it up in 2-3 years for a landfill.

The tile install costs are far cheaper for us. We live in Luxembourg where houses are almost always tiled as a matter of course, so wood/LVT/laminate is sort of a specialty installation and costs are insane. They don't do cheap materials here--it's very Germanic in the approach to building and everything is high quality and built to last a lifetime, which also makes materials extremely expensive. The house is an off-plan purchase (we bought the shell ready for the first fix) and as such we are contracted to use the building company to do big things like the flooring. Tile was included in the original purchase contract (because they have a professional tile guy in-house), which essentially means we don't have to pay extra for labour to have it installed, just for the extra material costs as the tile we want is more expensive. With wood or any other material, they outsource the materials and labour for installation as it's not their specialty, so we pay extra costs for that. Just as an example, the cost to put wood floors on the stairs was going to be 7k extra per staircase. A slightly nicer tile (50 eur/sqm) only costs us about 400 extra per staircase.

I had a combo of real wood and tile that looks like wood, NOW 10 years later I am ripping out the real wood and making everything the wood look tile. The tile looks like the day we installed it and even though I did everything to baby the wood it is a mess and needs to be replaced. We used Heartland Cherry from Bedrosian's Tile in California. It is a commercial grade porcelain tile. It even has the hand scraped waves of wood. We set it with the smallest grout like we could and then grouted with epoxy grout to make it water proof. If you have kids or pets it is the only way to go! I have had people see it and and they have to reach down and touch it because they cannot believe it is tile. This company makes 322 different wood look tiles so there is a huge choice of colors and styles and the quality of the tile is top notch. Tile will save you money now and in the future (no sandning/refinishing worn or damaged areas!)

If you need to save money, and the wood tile is cheaper and very realistic, then I suggest you go tile all the way. I've lived in Germany and they like stone, stone, stone, some concrete and then some stone for good measure ;-)

All of the floors I lived with were tile or stone of some sort. And yes they were cold. The Germanic countries don't care about that sort of thing. All they care about is durability. The "softening" comes with area rugs and wall art.

That's how you "show off" your taste/budget. I would save even more money and get rid of the "wood floor" all together. These houses are built to hold stone/tile floors (unlike two story N. American builds which are often wood structure and not reinforced for tile on the upper stories). You might as well get the thing that gives you the LOOK that you want while still saving you money the whole way around.

Good luck. Choose one material or the other if you can.

Here is the connection to photos of the tile installed in rooms you want to see them:

https://www.bedrosians.com/en/product/detail/tahoe-tile/?itemNo=CRDTAHGL840