Articles
Best flooring options for every room
Luxury vinyl tiles, laminate flooring and engineered wood flooring
The floor is the largest surface in the home, and picking the best type of flooring for your space depends on your budget, lifestyle and personal tastes. Each type has its unique benefits, and determining which flooring is best depends on each room’s needs and location.
Today hard surface materials such as engineered wood, Luxury Vinyl Tiles (LVT), and laminate flooring are often the preferred choice. These flooring materials are all much easier to clean and maintain and more resistant to stains. They’re also available in a massive range of designs, styles, colours and textures, giving you the freedom to play with a variety of flooring solutions.
Goodrich stays committed to making the interior design process easier. Want to talk about an interior design challenge at your site? Contact us now.
Luxury Vinyl Tiles (LVT) and flooring
Vinyl flooring has the advantage of being more yielding and warm underfoot than some other materials, so it’s great if you have young kids or pets. Other reasons that might make it the best flooring for you? Well, it’s easy to maintain and clean, saving you time.
Luxury vinyl tiles and flooring is a modern miracle with many options to fit many design styles. Vinyl flooring is a 100-percent synthetic material. In standard vinyl tiles, the base layer is usually fiberglass which is then coated in PVC vinyl and a plasticizer. The resulting sheet is printed and embossed with a surface print layer. Over this, multiple wear layers are applied, along with a layer of no-wax polyurethane.
All types of vinyl flooring are not just water-resistant but are waterproof. Luxury vinyl tiles, and vinyl flooring are usually made with materials that are 100-percent waterproof.
Vinyl flooring has three winning attributes that make it the best flooring suitable for every room. Vinyl stands up the best against excess moisture and spills, and it can be less expensive than laminate. However, laminate gives a more realistic wood look to enhance the overall design aesthetic.
- LOOKS Manufacturers have improved “printing” techniques to achieve startlingly realistic 3D graphics on the flooring surface.
- FEEL Texturing feels amazingly like the grain of wood or the texture of stone.
- THICKNESS Luxury vinyl flooring tends to be thicker and more durable.
Laminate Flooring
Laminate flooring is similar to luxury vinyl planks in its look and method of installation. Unlike vinyl flooring, its core is made from wood byproducts bonded with resins. The top surface is a hard, transparent plastic wear layer that covers the printed design layer. The overall thickness for laminate flooring planks ranges from 6 mm to 12 mm.
Laminate flooring allows for deep, realistic three-dimensional embossing on its surfaces, with accurate images of the material being portrayed such as wood, ceramic, or stone.
Engineered wood flooring
Engineered wood flooring was once regarded as a pale imitation of solid hardwood, but improvements in the product quality have eliminated this perception. Engineered wood uses less hardwood, a fact that appeals to environmentally conscious consumers.
Engineered wood flooring looks very much like solid hardwood, but its construction features a relatively thin layer of hardwood bonded over a premium-quality plywood layer that gives the flooring very good stability. A good-quality engineered wood floor typically lasts 25 to 30 years, and it is both less expensive and easier to install.
Engineered wood flooring is almost always sold pre-finished, and there is a narrower range of available colors and species
Engineered wood has slightly better performance in humid locations since its plywood construction makes it more stable and less susceptible to warping. If installation against a concrete subfloor is necessary, engineered hardwood is the choice.
Some engineered wood flooring is installed with “click-lock” edges that can be installed as a “floating floor.” In some of the best flooring options, engineered wood flooring can also be glued down against a concrete subfloor.
