Brown paper floor?

I did something similar when my friends were close to homeless. We ripped up the disintegrating possibly asbestos filled tiles in their apartment, stuck down some brick patterned contact paper we liberated from a Christmas display, and coated it with a healthy layer of Future.  It looked as bad as it sounds but when you’re in a building where three apartments share a bathroom you can’t be too picky. Now I think I’d just paint a pretty pattern on the subfloor and sharpie in lines to look like nice tiles. 

I did a big room in rough plywood a few years ago. I scored the sheets with a thin skillsaw blade at a 45 and made the sheets look like planks. Two nails where each fake plank ended, and a few coats of floor paint. It looked really good and stood up well. 

The Brown paper floor is pretty interesting to look at, but I wouldn't be considering doing it unless it was going into some quirky little hut or something. 

Consider me another vote for vinyl  plank. From a diy point of view, LVT is really nice to work with. Lays down easy, easy to cut profiles for openings etc. I've laid down about 60m² of vinyl plank in my house and am really happy with the results. 

The only downsides I'd say it has are substrate prep and ensuring you get the right LVT quality wise. Some LVT's are quite thin and will shadow/telegraph any little imperfections in the underlying floor. This means having a well prepared and perfectly clean floor is imperative to getting the best results. As was mentioned above, some LVT planks are a bit ordinary when it comes to squareness and straightness, and some are much more durable than others.

A friend of mine did it as a short term (2 years) flooring solution on slab foundation and it looked good for that purpose.  She had some nice oriental rugs on top of most of it, but with time it began to show wear in high traffic areas.  Ultimately she replaced with a quality floating laminate floor which was her ultimate intent.  Using a quality padding under laminate eliminated much of the hollow noise issues often encountered with laminate.

I like the pennies idea, I might do that on the floor of the head

There are "luxury vinyl plank" floors that are about 3/16"-1/4" thick, foam backed, heavy, and loose laid.  They fit very tightly when well put down, and they will hide a surprising amount of surface irregularity.  Best thing about them is that you can stick a utlity knife in a joint and pop a single plank if necessary.

In reply to pilotbraden:

RE pennies in the head... A local restaurant did that.  I thought it looked good when it went in, but the arear around the urinal has not aged well.  

WilD said:

In reply to pilotbraden:

RE pennies in the head... A local restaurant did that.  I thought it looked good when it went in, but the arear around the urinal has not aged well.  

The area around the urinal never ages well.  It's the one place that even a good epoxy terrazzo floor gives up.