I'll be one of the minority posters here. I had hardwood. I HATED it. When it came time to have it refinished once again I tore it out and replaced it with high end laminate. I love it does NOT scratch with my dog's nails, easy to clean and has not had to be replaced or refinished in 13 years unlike my hardwood which I had to have refinished every 4 years because of my dogs and kids.
I definitely would say get the higher end laminate. Mine is Pergo and it was the best one they offered at the time.
I have no regrets putting it in and I have no desire to sell my house anytime soon so it's all good that way.
Beautiful, thank you for posting the picture.We had laminate flooring installed on the main floor of our house a few months ago and we LOVE it! We decided to go with the laminate because of the cost and also we didn't want the maintenance of hardwood.
After doing lots of research on laminate flooring we went with the Pergo XP Peruvian Mahogany 10mm. I've had several people ask me if my floors were real hardwood.
Here's a picture ---
OP - I'd look into a hardwood like Bamboo. My bamboo was cheaper than my laminate at our house in Florida.
That said, our laminate there is beautiful and you'd never know it was laminate. It is 100x nicer than the cheap engineered wood flooring that in our neighbors house. There's looks way cheaper. I used to post pictures and people always thought the laminate was the real wood and not the other way around.