Flooring is the one interior decision that is genuinely hard to undo. Paint can be changed in a weekend. A floor you regret sits underneath everything you own for the next ten years.
Here is how to think about it, room by room and material by material.
Start with the room, not the material
Different rooms make different demands, and the mistake most people make is picking one floor for the whole house.
Kitchens and bathrooms need to survive standing water. Tiles and SPC are the safe answers. Laminate is not, whatever the box says about water resistance, because the joints eventually let moisture into the core and the board swells at the edges.
Bedrooms are low-traffic and dry, so comfort matters more than toughness. Laminate, engineered wood and good vinyl all perform well and feel warmer underfoot than tile.
Living rooms take the heaviest traffic in the house. SPC, quality laminate at 8mm or above, or porcelain tile all hold up.
Balconies and anything with direct sun need UV stability. This is where cheap vinyl fails fastest, fading and lifting within a season.
The four main options compared
Ceramic and porcelain tiles are the Kenyan default for good reason: durable, waterproof, widely available, easy to replace a single cracked piece. They are cold and hard underfoot, and grout lines need cleaning.
Vinyl (LVT and sheet vinyl) is the budget-friendly option. Soft underfoot, quiet, fully waterproof in sheet form. It is also the least forgiving of an uneven subfloor, because every bump telegraphs straight through.
Laminate gives the most convincing timber look for the money and installs fast as a floating floor. Keep it out of wet rooms and use proper underlay.
SPC (stone plastic composite) is what we increasingly recommend for whole-home installations. It is waterproof, dimensionally stable in heat and humidity, tougher than laminate, and it clicks together over an existing floor in many cases. It costs more upfront and less over its life.
The part that blows budgets: subfloor prep
Almost every flooring quote that ends up higher than expected does so because of what was under the old floor.
Common culprits: a screed that is out of level by more than 3mm over 2 metres, rising damp on ground-floor slabs, old tile adhesive that has to be ground off, and hollow or drummy sections that need breaking out and re-screeding.
None of this is visible until the old floor comes up. This is exactly why a site visit before quoting matters, and why the cheapest quote is often the one that grows mid-project.
For ground-floor rooms, budget for a damp-proof membrane. Skipping it to save money is the single most expensive mistake we see, because the floor fails and the whole job is repeated.
What it costs
Material rates vary widely by grade. As a guide, expect [insert range] per square metre for the flooring itself, plus [insert range] per square metre for installation, with subfloor correction quoted separately once the existing floor is inspected.
Book a site visit
We measure, assess the subfloor, recommend the right material for each room and install with clean edges and proper transitions. Free consultation, no obligation.
Call or WhatsApp 0717 044 443 with your location and approximate floor area, and we will arrange a visit.
More detail on our Floor Installation Services page.
