How long have you lived at your current home? What projects have you been thinking of doing to make your home nicer, more yours, and add more value? Maybe it’s been a few years and you bought your home “as is” and now have the budget to improve your home some more. Updating the flooring of your home, when done correctly, can be a huge value add to your home and you’ll finally get the floor you’ve always wanted.
Recently I had the opportunity to explore some possible new flooring options for my home and want to share my lessons learned with you so you can make the best decisions with your home’s flooring when you’re ready for something new.
Here are common types of flooring that suit most people’s needs in their homes and can be great options for you too. Hard surface flooring includes solid wood, engineered wood, luxury vinyl plank (known as LVP), laminate, tile, and linoleum. Soft surface flooring – there is carpet. Let me dive in and talk about what each of these common flooring is suitable for as well as their pros and cons.
Solid wood
Who else loves wood flooring, the softness and warmth it provides for a home? Solid wood flooring, as it sounds, is made of wood planks consisting one type of wood throughout. There are tons of options to choose from if you walk into a flooring store that specializes in solid wood flooring – oak, maple, hickory, cherry wood, etc. Each type has its unique characteristics such as grain pattern, hardness, finish colors (whether you like a natural finish or a stained finish), and shape (width and length of the planks).
Solid wood flooring is often the go-to choice for many homeowners to place in the living room, family room, dining room, and sometimes kitchen and bedrooms. Due to the natural absorbency of wood, many homeowners consciously keep wood flooring out of the kitchen and bathrooms to avoid water spill damages. With proper maintenance, solid wood flooring can last the lifetime of the home! And if it had been neglected by previous homeowners, it is easy (and inexpensive) to refinish the wood, apply a protection coating, and last ages. The downside to solid wood flooring is that it is relatively expensive upfront, and can warp with water exposure (like standing water not cleaned up right away).
Engineered wood
From my recent visit to the flooring store, I learned that engineered wood can be just as good as solid wood flooring! The engineered wood flooring consists of pressed wood (think of plywood) or a cheaper solid wood backing and topped with a solid wood surface. The top solid wood surface has as many color options and wood options as all solid wood flooring. Engineered wood flooring can be used anywhere you’d want to put solid wood flooring.
One big difference between engineered wood flooring and solid wood flooring is that engineered wood typically can only be glued to the subfloor whereas solid wood flooring can be nailed to a subfloor (if it is a raised wood subfloor) or glued to a subfloor (for either raised subfloor or concrete). Due to the cheaper backing material in engineered wood flooring, it is often cheaper than solid wood flooring, but not always.
With engineered wood flooring, you can also refinish it as you would with a solid wood floor, because of the top solid wood. The lifespan of engineered wood flooring is not as long as solid wood, as you would expect, but with proper care, good quality engineered wood floor can last 20 to 30 years. The down side is, being wood, it can warp just like solid wood flooring if water spills are not cleaned up right away.
Luxury vinyl plank (LVP)
LVP is a man-made material meant for a less expensive alternative for other natural flooring like wood and stone. The most popular I’ve seen are wood look-alike LVPs. There are some great economical options of LVP that have the wood flooring look, with just as good durability and lifespan. They have grains and grooves just like wood flooring, and even feel like wood when I put my hands on them!
Different from wood flooring, LVP is water resistant which means you can have consistent flooring throughout your home – kitchen and dining room, living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms. For the homeowners that contemplate wood flooring not being water resistant but love the look of consistent flooring throughout the home, LVP is a great option. Plus, the upfront cost of LVP can be half as much as solid wood flooring.
Many floor installers also love LVP because they are quick to install. Unlike being permanently attached to the subflooring like solid wood or engineered wood, LVPs are installed over an underlayment (like a cushion or a pad), making it faster and easier, therefore cheaper installation cost. If you must name one downside of LVP, the fact that it is not a real natural material like wood or stone would be it. There are very luxury LVPs can be as expensive, or more expensive than some inexpensive wood flooring, so don’t always assume the money saving by going with LVP.
Tile
In my experience, tile flooring is the most durable with least maintenance required. Tile flooring, due to its impermeability, is a great option to use in kitchen and bathrooms. In today’s age, there are thousands of tiles you can choose from, anywhere from traditional patterns with smaller tile pieces, to a more modern look of bigger tile pieces like 12 inches or 18 inches wide, to a wood-looking “planks” for those who want to have a consistent look but want real wood flooring elsewhere other than kitchen and bathrooms.
We can’t talk about tile without mentioning grout, which is the part that requires most attention to tile flooring. When you install tiles, the tile itself is pretty much maintenance free as long as you clean it and mop it as you would with any other flooring. But grout that fits the space between tiles needs to be cleaned and sealed every once a while. Depending on the use and traffic of the specific area, grout should be cleaned once a year to once every 3 to 5 years. Grout comes in different colors, and obviously you’d want a color that match your tile, but I have to say, no matter what color grout, it will become dark grey or black after a few years of traffic. So keep this in mind when you’re considering using tile as your flooring.
Prices of tiles can vary drastically depending on the style, size, popularity, etc. With proper care, tile flooring can last the lifetime of a house, just like solid wood flooring.
Carpet
Everyone loves soft carpet under their feet! For this reason, many homeowners like to have carpet in bedrooms and living room where people spend a lot of time. There are many different types of carpet you can choose from – natural material like wool, man-made material like nylon, with pattern, or no pattern, looped or not.
When looking for carpet, be sure to find something high performance, meaning durable with a lot of foot traffic, and stain resistance. Aside from being plushie, you want to make sure your new carpet will last you years to come and that you don’t have to spend hours vacuuming or trying to treat a stain. There will always be a padding that goes under the actual carpet, so consider getting a nice pad for extra comfort. High performance nylon carpet can be the most cost effective combination of durability and stain resistance.
I like carpet for the softness to walk on, but don’t love the “never get it 100% clean” aspect of it. If you have fur babies with uncontrollable hair flying into the carpet, it’s even harder. Consider getting low to mid pile for ease of cleaning rather than high pile carpet. Carpet can last up to 15 years with proper care, but I bet most of you will consider carpet update before you hit the 15 year mark.
Laminate and Linoleum
Laminate is another man-made material that can be an alternative option if LVP is too expensive to consider. It has a printed pattern on the top layer and the backing of the laminate consists of particle board. It comes in rolls and installers juts roll out the flooring and attach it to the subflooring. Laminate flooring has some resistance to water splashes but is neither waterproof nor water resistant. So the best use for laminate are areas outside of kitchen and bathrooms.
Linoleum was the popular flooring option in the 50s and 60s, often used in kitchen, hallways, and bathrooms. It too as printed pattern and installed in rolls, similar to laminate flooring. Linoleum, however, is water resistant, unlike laminate flooring.
I put these two types together because they have a few characteristics that steer me away from them. First, both are man-made materials that is “single use”, unlike solid wood or engineered wood where you can refinish, laminate and linoleum can’t be refreshed with wear and tear and must be replaced. Second, they are both very thin materials to install over the subflooring so if you have concrete under laminate or linoleum, they are kind of hard on your feet. Personally I don’t like the printed look on these rolls but many people do. They both can last over 20 years with proper care.
Parting Thoughts
When considering spending money to update your home, you probably have the thought in the back of your mind “is this going to increase the value of my home?”. While you shouldn’t let it drive the decision for what you want in your home, it can be a plus if you know the upgrade work is going to make you money “on the back end” in the future. A little tip here – generally speaking, new wood flooring and tile flooring will add value to your home whereas other types of flooring won’t. This is not a hard rule so if you want to make money from this flooring upgrade, let’s talk in detail and see what’s the best option for you. I hope you had as much fun reading this article as I had writing it. When are you planning to upgrade your flooring? I’d love to know – email me!
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