Which Interior Flooring is Best?

Where do you start when choosing new flooring?

When shopping for new flooring a good place to start is to decide which type of flooring you want in each room. Carpet for the bedrooms? Carpet, LVT, Laminate or wood in the hallways? LVT or stone in the kitchen and bathrooms? It’s your home so you can choose whichever flooring you want for each room!

With that being said, you do need to make sure the flooring is suitable for each room. This largely comes down to making sure the flooring for bathrooms and toilets are not going to be easily damaged by moisture. Plus most people prefer soft carpet in their bedrooms.

You then need to decide how much you want to spend and then start shopping for products within your budget.

Which flooring is popular right now?

The most popular interior flooring right now is LVT flooring. There are numerous features of LVT that make it attractive to so many. It’s waterproof, it’s easy to install, it’s not hugely reactive to temperature and it’s available in wide varieties.

Keeping in mind all of the above advantages, all of these benefits are available at a lower cost than natural floor types such as real wood or stone. The click LVT versions are designed to be suitable for DIY home projects by people with little to no experience in flooring installs.

The glue down LVT versions are also simple to install but they do require adhesive, which makes the installation more involved. This version is better suited to professional installers and also commercial environments such as schools and offices.

Is LVT really better than Laminate?

LVT and Laminate flooring are very similar, the main difference between them is LVT flooring is fully waterproof and laminate is not. Laminate is a little cheaper and can be less brittle during the installation process. Laminate is also extremely hard wearing, but can easily become ruined if it gets wet.

This provides peace of mind knowing that you could submerge LVT in water and it be totally fine. For a little extra money the majority of people would rather have the peace of mind.

There are those however that choose to save money by only having LVT in bathrooms and toilets, and have laminate for the larger living room, hallways and kitchen areas. It does make sense if you want to keep costs down to use the less expensive option for the large areas and the more expensive option for the smaller areas. Online flooring supplies shops usually have lower prices than high street shops so it’s worth shopping around.

Which is better, stone or LVT flooring?

LVT and stone flooring serve a similar purpose, they are both hard wearing and waterproof. However considering more people in recent years have purchased LVT flooring than stone, the numbers indicate that LVT must be better.

LVT is easier to install, it’s warmer to the touch, it’s slightly softer and it’s quieter to walk on. A large percentage of DIY installers are capable of installing click LVT flooring, whereas a much smaller percentage are capable of installing stone flooring.

Like most things in life it ultimately comes down to personal preference. Good quality stone floors do look fantastic and it’s easy to understand why stone floors are still popular.

Is real wood flooring still a good idea?

Real wood flooring is still highly popular so lots of people clearly think it’s still a good idea. The natural warm luxury that real wood flooring provides is unique and cannot be matched by any other flooring material.

Solid wood flooring has been known to last over 100 years, which is an incredibly long period of time. Stone flooring can last this long too, however stone is noticeably harder and colder than wood.

Engineered wood flooring with a thick wear layer can easily last more than 30 years. It doesn’t tend to last as long as solid wood because it has a thinner wear layer which can’t be sanded down as many times as solid wood.

Is carpet suitable for bathrooms?

Carpet if often used in bathrooms because it’s soft for bare feet and also non slippery. Whilst carpet is fine to get a bit wet in bathrooms and showers, the main reason to not use carpet in these areas is hygiene.

Especially rooms where there are toilets, the most hygienic flooring option is something that can be easily cleaned with disinfectant. The nature of carpet with its soft fibers can make it difficult to get as clean as a material such as LVT.

If you do really want carpet in bathrooms and toilets it’s best to change the carpet more regularly to be as hygienic as possible.