Anonymous wrote:
We are doing a home renovation and I'm having trouble figuring out the basement floor which is quite large.
It will be a playroom for older kids/guest space. The builder recommends wall to wall carpet but I'm having trouble getting excited about that.
I love the wood-look ceramic tile but he thinks that will feel too hard and cold?I wish we had under-floor heating down there but we don't.
I plan to have a large rug on the tile but not sure if that will be enough to make the area feel cozy.
The builder suggested luxury vinyl tile over ceramic if I insist on tile as he thinks it has a softer and warmer feel.
Has anyone put tile and regretted it? Any advice?

your builder is right. Our basement is travertine. Even with Persian rugs, it is freezing down there.

even though i love the look of other flooring options, we went with wall to wall carpet. i love it. our kids love playing downstairs now. its cozy and warm.

I recently read about a vinyl flooring with a cork backing. No idea if it's good, but you might want to look into it

Tile will be cold, tile will be loud, but area rugs will help. Some basements seem to flood, some don't. The one in our house did, and the wall-to-wall the previous owners had just put in was ruined. We put down Flor carpet tiles and are really happy with them. They were easy to deal with when we had more flooding (eventually we installed a French drain = no more flooding).

We put in a subfloor (which is framing basically). It allows us to have the vapor barrier and styrofoam insulation underneath. On top we put plywood. Next is the finished flooring (in our case a pad and carpeting). It makes a HUGE difference. You would never know you are in the basement. It's never cold. We did this ourselves because most flooring places say it's not necessary, but really, if you want a great basement it is. Our son lives down there and our guests love it when they come (they want to stay down there even when offered lovely bedrooms upstairs).

Yes, it costs more, but it made our basement feel like the upstairs (along with insulating all the walls, putting in expensive windows and french doors). We don't even need to turn on the heat down there in the winter.