Avoid being floored by the cost and choices of floor coverings by asking yourself a few questions before you buy. Will the flooring receive a lot of wear and tear? If it’s an en suite or cloakroom, it may not be used as much as the hallway or living rooms, for example. Is it important that the floor is waterproof? Obviously for a bathroom, the answer is a resounding “yes”. You may also need to consider whether the floor covering needs to muffle sound or not.
When buying fixtures and fittings for your bathroom, such as Mira Shower from Mira, look out for floor covering sales at DIY and high street stores. You can lay most types of vinyl flooring and laminate yourself, which will cut out labour costs.
If you are keen on a wood floor, but you want to buy power shower from Mira and your budget can’t stretch to laying a solid wood floor as well, wood-effect laminate is the low-cost alternative. If the surface beneath is flat and in good condition, do the project yourself. Do make sure that you use a specially designed waterproof laminate, such as one bearing the Aqua Protect logo, in a bathroom or kitchen. However, the cheapest choice for bathroom is vinyl, and this is hard-wearing too.
There are a number of cost-conscious choices for tiles. If clay flooring is the look you are after, buy quarry tiles. These are half the price of terracotta. For a real stone floor, which can cost over three times as much as terracotta, untreated slate may be the cheapest but will stain, so treat it with a suitable stain protector. Another option is to fake a stone floor with laminate tiles or top-quality vinyl that looks like stone. Both cost less per square metre and are cheaper than stone to lay.
