Hello Stella In the flooring industry this type of flooring was called a floating floor, because it sits on an underlay. Now it is called an engineered floor (and stops the first question being about the noise underfoot).... but the noise remains depending on the level of the floor and the type of underlay. Engineered floors have a number of layers of timber/ply at right angles to allow the expansion/contraction of the grain to be controlled. The top layer is the prefinished or raw timber species that you want with the other layers in various ply. There are cheaper alternatives again that have particle board (chipboard) or mdf backing with a laminate printed pattern. These are, in my humble opinion not worth opening the box. A solid timber floor can be laid a multitude of ways. Over concrete, I waterproof the slab, level it and glue and nail a plywood sheet. The timber is then laid over it, sanded and flooded (gaps filled) then sealed with a finish being either oil or water/oil based polyurethane. It can also be stained before sealing. With the engineered floors, they come from all over the world. Some are made in China, some are made in Indonesia, some are made in Europe and so on. A major supplier to a lot of the flooring companies is a company called Premium Floors. They supply products to eg carpet shops inc Quick-step and have done for many many years. Their website is worth a look before you go out into retail outlets. As to your original question, when I built my first family home I installed a readyflor (premium floors as it happened) floating floor. The floor withstood some almighty parties (before kids) and still looks amazing 18 years later (it hasn't been sanded at all). Today, I only install solid timber floors in our work purely because of personal preference and the type of renovations we are doing, and when requested by a client we have sourced from Europe. Cheers

thank you bigreader but I haven't posted a photo of them yet. They are not my ideal choice. I only went with these at the time because they were cheap from fantastic furniture. I originally wanted blue stools but the price was out of my budget considering I could get four grey/silver ones for the price of 1 blue one. I can post a photo of them in the morning

Hi Siriuskey, They are timber looking tiles - we absolutely love them. We are considering the same for the new place but potentially herringbone/parquetry arrangement. Much more expensive vs. laminate but easier to clean and no concern in relation to water...

Hi Fiona, I normally answer design-related questions but you grabbed my interest with this gorgeous ottoman/pouffe from studio szpunar, based in Warsaw, Poland. It looks like it was only ever a prototype, but I would email the studio direct to see whether they can make one for you hello@studioszpunar.com . As for similar products, no-one else seems to offer a curved plywood ottoman of any kind - we often design bespoke curved joinery so are looking into the possibilities at the moment. However the closest thing I could find was this product on etsy; https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/280350356/storage-ottoman-upholstered-ottoman-pouf?ref=related-5 Good Luck! Kate