Hardwood floors vs laminate, vinyl or Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT)
The preferred flooring in a home is almost always hardwood floors, but sometimes other option make more sense.
Why are hardwood floors so popular? First, they are renewable, meaning you can sand and refinish them/re-coat them, multiple times in order to change the color or bring them back to life after years of neglect. They are hard and durable, yet easy on your feet, unlike concrete or tile. Every board is different and you can control the grain and variation of color, if desired. They are customizable as far as achieving almost any color or sheen. Quite often we sand and finish clients floors to match or favor their kitchen cabinets, or a favorite piece of furniture. The air quality of your home will improve, especially if removing carpeting and installing wood floors, there are no formaldehyde emissions, like other type of flooring. Many of our past clients, with allergies have commented on how much easier it was to live and breath in their home without the dust and dander, that was constantly being emitted. They are very easy to clean as well, generally a quick vacuum and running a Swiffer type mop works great (do not wet mop your wood floors). They are timeless, we are constantly bringing 100+ year old floors back to life. As the styles and design trends change, so can your floor. For example, in the 1980’s the white-washed or pickled floors were very popular, now that trend is back, after doing a lot of dark browns for years. A quick sanding and we can change the color very easily. Most importantly, you will ADD value to your home, according to CNN, wood floors can increase the value of your home by 5%, meaning you can assume to get a 100% return on your investment!!
Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT), Laminate or Vinyl floors can be a nice addition to your home also. It just depends on your needs or expectations. Area we like this type of flooring in are wet areas, basements, or areas that get a massive amount of traffic, with little regard for the floors. Some examples of these may be kids play rooms or mudrooms, where that is the main entry point of the home. This type of flooring won’t buckle or swell as much if it takes on a lot of water/moisture. It tends to scratch much less than wood floors. It is much more affordable than wood flooring also and offers many different designs. Like hardwood floors, it can be used over in-floor heating. The maintenance for these type of floors are also quite simple with a quick vacuum and mopping (these types of floors can handle wet mopping much better than wood floors).
The main downside of these plastic floors are they add no value to your home. They can dent and scratch and have been know to fade with the sunlight. They are NOT renewable, meaning when they serve their purpose, they are off to the landfill. Quite often these floors are floating, meaning they are not attached to the floor, they are just all locked together, so people have complained that the floor moves up and down as you walk on it and can have hollow spots. These types of flooring can also contain several undesirable chemicals like, PVC, cadmium, lead, isocyanates, aluminum oxide, formaldehyde, remember the 60 Minutes episode on the Chinese laminate flooring at Lumber Liquidator?
The choice is yours, we are here to answer any questions that you still may have.
