Do you feel like the flooring options for your home have become confusing? There are now so many different types and brands that keeping up with everything can seem overwhelming. Most people don’t shop for new flooring that often, so when you start looking at options, you may feel a little out of reach. One type of flooring that we hope to cover in this article is luxury vinyl.
In addition to carpet, hardwood, and laminate, vinyl is a popular choice for flooring in your home or business. The vinyl itself comes in various forms. There are vinyl sheets, which are glued directly to the subfloor. Sheet vinyl has come a long way with realistic tile, wood, and stone appearances. The other option for vinyl is called luxury vinyl, which comes in tiles or planks.
Luxury vinyl tile (LVT) looks like stone or ceramic. With natural colors and surface texture, these tiles look and feel like real stone or ceramic. Luxury Vinyl Plank (LVP) offers the look of wood planks in various species and colors. Surface textures can even include scratching or stamping to enhance realism.
Whether you choose vinyl, LVT, or LVP sheet, you’ll get a resilient floor known for its warmth and comfort underfoot. However, its real claim to fame is its resistance to humidity, which makes it the best option for a bathroom or kitchen. It is also much less expensive than actual ceramic or wood.
So maybe you’ve decided that luxury vinyl is the way to go for your new bathroom installation, now all you need to do is decide on the style and color, right? Not quite, there are still many more things to consider and this is where it can get confusing.
First, you can choose how you want to install your luxury vinyl flooring. There are still a few you can paste, while other options include floating click and drop placement. With the floating click, the planks or tiles snap together to form an airtight seal. Loose floors allow you to simply lay down each piece to cover the floor. This type of flooring is easy to repair since you can easily remove a piece in the middle of the room and replace it.
You will also have options on the thickness of the tiles or planks. The core of the board may have additional padding to dampen sound and provide more underfoot comfort. Other types can be stiffer, allowing them to better withstand heavy foot traffic.
There are a few other acronyms used to describe the core of luxury vinyl: WPC and SPC. Depending on the manufacturer, these represent different things. For example, WPC can mean wood-plastic composite, waterproof polymer core, or wood polymer core. Similarly, SPC can stand for stone polymer composite, solid polymer core, and other variations. So you can see where the confusion could arise!
If you’re shopping for new flooring and decide to look into luxury vinyl, you may find yourself frustrated with all the different terms and lack of consistency. All manufacturers tend to have their own name for things, making it difficult for the consumer to know what is what. With just a few internet searches, you’ll soon realize there’s a lot more to luxury vinyl flooring than you originally thought!
This is where your local flooring store may be your best bet for expert flooring advice. They’ll know the differences between manufacturers and the type of products they make, so you’ll be able to compare them better. Also, you can simply explain to an expert at a flooring store what kind of look you want, where in the house it will be used, and what kind of traffic it is likely to receive. They can then offer suggestions and help you weed through jungle flooring to find the best luxury vinyl option for your needs.