When we moved into our last house, all the bedrooms had beautiful wood floors. My dd really wanted carpeting. Her room was around 15x17.. a good size. I got a soft feel wall to wall carpet cut to fit and had the edges bound. We also put a soft felt padding underneath. It looked and wore like wall to wall. When we were getting ready to sell 7 years later, we pulled it all up and the floors underneath looked brand new. Tossed the carpet, but used the felt padding under our area rugs in the next house. I would strongly suggest going this route so you have the option of easily going back to wood floors. Don't let installers put tacking strips on those wood floors.

well of course install would be bit more if you're comparing it to a click and lock type of vinyl. But are you aware they also have floating click/lock wood floors?? doesn't have to be a glue or nail down. this wouldn't be any more to install and you'd prob find exactly what you want, color-wise. https://jenwoodhouse.com/how-to-install-engineered-hardwood-flooring/ you could always install it yourselves. malibu wide plank click/lock french oak- home depot https://homedepot.sjv.io/kv990 BuildDirect And I'll bet you dollars to donuts the average homeowner would like this much better than vinyl. (but I guess it would depend where you live. somewhere in podunk NE prob wouldn't care as much as a metropolitan city area. Same issue w/home prices. places like MS where you can buy a home for 80K isn't going to be the same in a city where similar homes go for 600-800K. The latter will expect wood as opposed to vinyl) So if you live in a city where homes are super inexpensive, then I guess vinyl wouldn't be an issue. I mentioned this type of engineered flooring because you're the one who has said they've looked for over a month and couldn't find what's in that picture. this one is the finished flooring from HD from JenWoodhouse.

I thought I'd reply to my own thread here for anybody who wants to read it in the future. First, the movers were awful and had had five hours of sleep. Although they were mostly very nice, they got more and more sloppy as the ten-hour day wore on, and so only half of this is their fault personally. The moving company should not have sent two guys to empty 30k lbs of stuff from a moving truck when they had done the same thing for some other family 600 miles away the night before. We bought ramboard as well as ramboard tape. Per some YouTube video I watched, we put painters tape down on the floor and then taped the ramboard tape onto that instead of onto the floor directly. This was kind of a hassle, and I don't know if it was actually necessary, but it worked fine. The ramboard mostly stayed put. We created paths to the major areas of the house with that and I was glad we did. There was no floor damage. We also layered 2-3 folded moving blankets on the front step so protect the exterior tile. This was incredibly important, because they carelessly rammed the hand truck wheels into it every single time to get it up the front step. I couldn't believe how hard they hit it every time – it was loud even through the blankets! – and I was very glad we had the folded moving blankets there. I did have to reposition them several times throughout the day. I couldn't come up with a good solution in time for protecting the interior corners that didn't require installation and/or drilling something into the wall, so we just crossed our fingers. They rammed a hand truck into one corner and it took a 1x2" chunk out of the drywall, but everything else was good. We have an interior full-lite glass door in one room, and they almost shattered it by backing some furniture into it. It was only through luck that my husband was there to say "wait! stop!" and prevent a disaster. We also arranged the small amount of furniture already present to block access to areas that we cared about a lot. We moved living room furniture and boxes to prevent them getting anywhere near the TV, and we also blocked off the kitchen so they didn't have to navigate boxes and furniture around the island and the rest of the kitchen's many right angles. Looking back, my advice to myself would be to find 2-3 people who can just sit in the high-risk areas all day and keep an eye on things. The movers were definitely more careful when someone was sitting in an area, so if we'd had someone stationed by the tight areas, that probably would have helped. All in all we didn't have too much damage, though what we had was indeed annoying, and the ramboard was definitely 100% worth the cost and trouble to set up.

BTW to brighten up a space get better lighting. IMO all the bulbs LED 4000K but even 3500K will make a huge difference and I wouldwait until that lighting is dealt with before choosing the flooring. The lighting has a huge effect on colors .Those horrible flourecsent fixtures were never good so start in the kitchen and replace that lighting . There are some great ways to handle the removal and replacement of that ceiling light.This would be the ideal but will cost some money and work to do but it give you the idea of what you could do.