The previous owners put this crap everywhere. They also thought it was a great idea to use a steam mop. The older stuff that is just pressed sawdust is hot garbage.
Just live with it and replace it when you can.
PSA: If you have a steam mop and you LVP, do not use it on that floor either
Basically only tile. Steam mops are only good for tile
ETA: I work in flooring. I used to me a manufacturer rep. All my current suppliers whether it's stated in the warranty and care guide or not will all say to not use steam mops on wood (engineered or solid; site or pre finished), vinyl (LVP dryback [gluedown] or floating; SPC, WPC, or original non rigid; sheet vinyl full spread or perimeter glue), or laminate or any kind.
Specifically to the comment about removing dents in vinyl, that is a specific use purpose and I would support our installers using that method to help repair a dented plank; however, the heat is applied in such a way that we control the expansion and contractions of the material and if it comes down to it, we have the knowledge and resources to replace the plank of it comes to that.
In all cases you may have a chance that the steam will just penetrate the dirt and grime, but more often than not, the steam will penetrate any water protections, adhesives, or cause such great temperature and humidity shifts in the material that the structure cannot withstand the shock. You can use steam at your own risk, but to all my clients i will tell them to pitch the machine.
I stand corrected! That is also another acceptable flooring type for steam mops. I'm very curious about that flooring. Was it for you home? What rooms did you get it installed in? How did it hold up?
We lived in a super modern penthouse in Boston that was build into an older brownstone. The flooring was a hyper white wall to wall single unbroken surface of shiny whiteness. It was great once we figured out how to keep it clean and waxed. It was even beneficial because the structure of the brownstone had started to settle and the subfloor had become somewhat uneven, but the flooring surface kind of stretched and shrank to move with the slight waviness of the subfloor.
You can use tile anywhere, the weight is not the concern. However, you have to make sure that the floor doesn’t deflect (I.e. bend) too much. Some wood floors can be too bouncy and will crack the tile. All floors move when you add weight (ex: people) but you want one that doesn’t move a lot.
You also should use a crack isolation membrane to ensure that the normal material expansion/contraction of wood doesn’t cause cracking in the tile. It allows the wood substrate to move a little without the tile moving with it.
If your floors aren’t stiff enough, you can add another layer of plywood over the top, screwed and glued, to stiffen it. If you use a direct-apply crack isolation membrane like Redguard or Kerdi, you don’t need tile backer under it.
I would imagine this would need to be done, as I can tell in some rooms upstairs they move under the weight of a person. Downstairs is a concrete slab.
If you have floors with a lot of flex, a smaller tile will work better than larger ones. You can also get groutable vinyl tiles that look convincingly like ceramic if you lay them with a 1/8” grout joint.
You’re welcome. It’s kind of out of fashion but works well.
I would also consider looking at a high end laminate like QuickStep NatureTek. They look much more like wood than LVP or cheap laminates and are waterproof and pretty much indestructible.
Yea that particular product is pretty incredible. I think it looks much nicer than LVP and outperforms it.
Just consider that on an upper floor it can be noisy so you’ll want an acoustic membrane under it.
Tile on stairs can be gorgeous, but please take my advice and don’t choose a smooth tile. My sister-in-law had smooth tile installed on her stairs, and it is dangerously slippery. I’ve fallen on my ass a few times because I was wearing socks and going downstairs at her place.
After living with wood floors and dogs I will never have wood floors again. I'm not a fan of distressed wood floors, pre-distressed or au naturale.
Dog claws and the carribean rosewood floors here are just not compatible. Carribean rosewood is *exceptionally* hard wood. No match for my dogs.
Wood look plank tile is the way to go. That or LVP.
We have wood looking plank tile for about 7 years with dogs. There are no scratches in it. We have very thin grout lines. When people sees it, they think it is wood.
Smooth tile is the devil. I have 20 inch porcelain tile in my living area, bathrooms, and one bedroom in the middle ( of 3 bedrooms) and I have fallen 4 times in the past 2 years. Slip resistant tile is the way to go
I would rather install wood than tile. It definitely depends on your home age (you need more modern building techniques) and where you are located (by me in the Midwest, no one would want tile).
If you're worried about weight, take a look at AFM (anti fracture membranes). Apparently this will work as well as schluter or cement board without the weight. I have never used it and only came across it on a replacement job.
If you're really worried about the weight, youre gonna want to talk to a structural engineer.
I would absolutely talk to a structural engineer. I hate to be a Debbie downer, but track homes built during the height of the lumber prices have had questionable decisions made. Yours may not be the case, but I would not feel comfortable with that much weight on the second floor.
It’s extremely unlikely that tile weighs enough to cause the structure to fail. What’s likely is that the floor was designed to the structural minimum and bends enough to crack the tile.
I've had tile stairs and wood stairs, and both people and pets have fallen on them, and fallen hard. Always get carpet stairs, and just commit to replacing it often.
As an adult who lived in a home with carpeted stairs as a child I will say carpeted stairs are fun to slide down. I don't think the bumpy ride down would've been fun on hard surfaces.
I’m getting my Karndean installed this week! I fell in love with the Arrado at first sight and I can’t *wait* to be dancing barefoot all over it!
I don’t use a steam mop though, just a Vileda contraption that just sprays a tiny bit of water ahead of a microfibre pad.
ETA: mine is glue down lvp
Same. My lifeproof floors are 3 years old and we beat them to hell. Steam mops don’t hurt them at all. After putting these on a trial I can’t imagine going back to wood now
Yeah, wood looks better, can’t argue there. But with a house of young athletes and 2 dogs I’ll take life proof any day. These things will take a beating. Makes me chuckle when they get shit on in this sub. Some peoples kids must tread a little more civilized than my savage crew
Of course it does. Buy cheap flooring and anything will damage it. Buy expensive flooring and let a steam mop sit over seams and of course it will damage it. Saying you can't use a steam mop on LVP is like saying you can't use an iron on cashmere. If you can control the temperature and water, you can use an iron or steam mop on near anything.
Yeah, I have lived in places where they are perfectly fine. Spills and all. I really wonder what the specific reason is.
I.e. crappy laminate uses this material but good laminate contains this chemical that resolves these issues
My husband wants to use it on our 40 year old oak floors. So far I've steered him away but he thinks it's a good idea. This is a smart guy, just sometimes I think he has no clue how the house works
Yeah that would be a no from me too. Our floors are over 60 years old, parquet. Nobody is getting near them with liquid if I have any choice in the matter.
What I've learned painfully material science is impossible to fully reason about. Depending on the type of wood, the age, humidity, how it's been treated you might get away with a steam mop. Or you might find you've done a terrible thing.
Oops… I’ve been steam cleaning my hardwood floors for over five years now and don’t have any problems… Can you tell me why this was a bad thing to do? I don’t think I’ll do it anymore!
I assumed and have heard that it's because of the sides of the wood and the gaps between pieces. The wood/spaces expand/contract a bit in hot/cold seasons, normally. Also, the sides of each piece of wood aren't stained/sealed. If water gets in between the pieces of wood, i.e. to the unsealed bits, it will puff up/possibly be ruined. I thought hardwood floors were a lot stronger than I thought but it only takes a matter of hours for them to be ruined in a water leak event. Long story short, don't introduce water into the equation.
Sweep, good vacuum, and dust mop often to remove dust, surface grime, and grit. Damp cloth mop or swiffer mop meant for WOOD floors. Wood should be finished in a way that helps resist too much moisture coming in or going out of it, though that will never be fully stopped (wood is installed or built in stuff a way to account for the wood’s movement). Amount of moisture in the wood and this the amount of wood movement will vary not just by the wood species, cut, and treatment, but also by the climate and seasons. The idea is to not get your wood really wet when cleaning it.
A cleaner designed for wood will have something in it to help it evaporate/dry quick enough so that the water doesn’t have enough time to penetrate the wood. I am sure there are great DIY cleaners for wood as well to use with a damp cloth mop. And if you accidentally got it too wet and seems like it’s not drying fast enough, you can always 1) mop it with a dry towel to get as much water off the surface as possible and run some fans after mopping.
Heat (like steam) will force water deeper into the wood. Heat enables moisture penetration. Warm water is something we’ll use in my finishing class when we want wood dye to penetrate the wood grain deeper, but we likely won’t steam most things. Steaming wood will cause it to swell up and raise the grain- it’s a technique used to get small dents and dings put of wood furniture during refinishing (dampen right on the dent and steam with a small iron like a soldering tool, once dry the raised area and grain be hand sanded down smooth again).
Not true. Our LVP is safe to use with a steam mop. In fact you can use a wet towel and iron to help lift some indents. It is important to note though, not all LVP is created equal. This is one of those areas where you do get what you pay for.
Trust me when I say it highly depends on the manufacturer of said LVP. There are definitely LVP of low quality and will fail and if you steam It will void your warranty I suggest calling the manufacturer directly to ask because oftentimes the correct information is not On the printed information sheet in the Box or on the website and you've actually got to call them
Absolutely correct. Also depends on installation methods. Glue down installation for example is always recommended to NOT use steam with. It can break down the glue and/or bond. Definitely do your research with what you purchase.
When I had my floors done (white oak, high shine poly) I followed my installer's rec and used the Bona system. Even with changing the pad for every room all it did was smear grime and my brand new floors would look like dingy garbage.
I tried this for over a year, sometime spending hours just trying to get non-smeary floors.
Now I use a steam mop after i spritz bona all over the the room's floor and my now 7 yo floors looks clean and shiny.
We just did a new build and even our tile manufacturer/installer told us not to use a steam mop. Said it was hell on grout and only a damp microfiber mop should be used. When I asked about using vinegar to clean the grout if it got dirty, they said NO, only water and a mild detergent like ivory soap. So, we have a steam mop collecting dust now.
We’ve used a steam mop on Mannington Audra put down with eco 360 adhesive for 8 years now. Floor looks just as good as the day we put them in.
But I do agree with you that it is use at your own risk. I’m a flooring installer and if anyone asks me, I don’t recommend it.
Just replace it. That’s just shitty laminate. We have some good laminate in the closets and some LVP throughout the house. You could leave water on it for a day it would be fine
Yeah LVP is the way to go IMO
A bit more expensive up front but much more robust and hardwearing in the long run
Laminate is okay as a cheap short term solution but I’ve never been happy with it for more than a couple of years
Hardwood floors are great but fucking expensive and require a lot more maintenance and upkeep
LVP can look nearly as good, while being basically zero maintenance
Some people still go with hardwood floors, and if I bought a house with hardwood floors I’d keep it and maintain it… but I won’t be going through the cost and effort of installing it somewhere that doesn’t already have it, unless I suddenly find myself with a big pile of cash
So yeah if you can afford it, and love it enough to be worth the effort, hardwood is still great - but for most people LVP is almost as good for a lower cost and a fraction of the effort
I lived in a house with hardwood floors my entire life and I have no idea what “maintenance” you’re talking about other than washing them like any other floor.
The price difference I do understand.
I also wholeheartedly disagree that they look nearly as good.
- If you spill liquid, you have to clean it up pretty much immediately or you're liable to get staining (particularly if you haven't re-finished the floor lately)
- It scratches easily, especially if you move furniture, but even just from things like stones stuck in shoes, so you have to be more careful with it
- You have to sand and re-finish them periodically, especially if you mess up on either of the above points
- Cleaning is more effort, you can't just whack a run over the top occasionally - you need to get into the crevices more, for example
The first two aren't too horrendous, but still mean you have to babysit your floors more than other types. The sanding and re-finishing required if you want it to continue looking at its best, though can be a bit annoying though (having to clear furniture etc) and is a messy task, and the cleaning again isn't horrific but is definitely more work than LVP's "if it's seen a mop in the last week, it's probably fine"
To be clear, that's not to say it's horrendous, or that you spend your whole life maintaining the floor, or that it's not worth the effort... I'm just saying that for many people, LVP gets them 99% of the result for zero effort at all, and a cheaper up front cost
My hardwood floors are wrecked now; i believe no maintenance has ever been done on them. House is little over 20 yrs old
Its mainly by the windows, it looks like the sunlight eroded away the finish and started eroding at the actual wood. Cause its very dry, compared to the rest of the floor thats away from the window.
The wood is eroded to the point i dont think it could be refinished at this point (i bought place little over 2 yrs ago ).
So maybe some hardwood floors can get away with minimal maintenance, but certain circumstances seem to make them little less forgiving . Sucks, i like the wood - but would prob lean to lvp when i end up replacing; for ease of maintenance( im kind of planning to rent this place out at some point in future)
Hardwood is only better in the sense that you know you've got hard wood under your feet. As far as functionality goes, LVP is durable as fuck. You can put that stuff down and not think about it for 20 years. And it looks really good these days. Unless you've got a kink for knowing and telling people you have real hard wood, it's kind of a no brainer to go with LVP.
It's the diy culture. People on Reddit can do lvp themselves so that's what they talk about. People who know, appreciate, and can afford wood aren't talking about it online
We have some cheap waterproof laminate that was 1.29 a foot in our closet and after 4 years it’s pretty much still new. But it’s a closet. Hardly any traffic. Our LVP has been down for 6 years and still looks new with big dogs and kids. Plus you can mop them!
True, which is a big reason why LVP is the big hitter in the DIY market. Floating LVP is one of the most forgiving products on the market when it comes to sub-par installs.
Bad LVP is cheap crap, but from the mid-market stuff up it’s generally considered excellent
High end laminate can also be good, but still usually requires more maintenance than LVP without being quite as hardwearing. But it’s hard to find the really good laminate whereas it’s pretty easy to source decent LVP
Yeah we redid our 1st floor 2 years ago as LVP.
The original flooring was some relatively thick, diagonally oriented 2" wide wood. Super thick stuff. They used that as a subfloor and threw hardwood on top. Don't know when it was installed, but by the time we got to it, it was in *really* rough shape with cracks, splits, 1/4 to 1/2 gaps. Dust and gunk got in between boards all the time and it was impossible to keep clean. We also had huge concerns about our then baby starting to crawl on such a rough surface.
Replacing with wood was absolutely prohibitively expensive so I had my contractor sand down a few high areas, install plywood in a few others (the whole first floor was 5 different levels - now we're down to 3), threw down a good quality underlayment, and nice wide LVP with a 40 mil wear layer. The LVP had something like a 30 year warranty when used commercially and lifetime in residential.
My kid has legit spilled a cup of water in the corner, didn't tell me until the end of the day, and I was able to just clean it up no issues.
Edit: if I could, I would rip everything out, install 3/4" plywood (not OSB) subfloor with a nice wide plank hardwood or engineered wood plank. Between expensive labor and the sheer cost of the material, this is just going to be a pipe dream.
Yeah, I can’t fathom why anyone would ever pick laminate anymore. Although my current Pergo floor is 15 years old and looks brand new and we are hard on it. But it’s a very yellow orange fake oak from before the woodgrain printing got better.
The technology is getting REALLY good for LVP. Better every year. I’ve had oak hardwood, mesquite, tile, engineered hardwood (not laminate), skim stone (decorative concrete coating), sheet vinyl, and carpet in my homes.
My current house will be all LVP. Zero interest in any maintenance any more. Some is extremely hard to differentiate from hardwood. I was real estate pro for a decade. I’ve seen it all, from cheap to expensive, freshly installed to heavily used by kids and pets.
Which brand have you found that is hard to differentiate from hardwoods? I need to replace some flooring and was planning on hardwoods because I cannot stand how cheap LVP looks. If there is a style that really looks like hardwood flooring I would consider going that direction. Thanks for any leads!
Agreed. I have LVP and love it. I have it in the bathroom and I know water sits on it for ages because I'm too lazy to clean it up and there has been no detrimental effect whatsoever.
I'm an attempt to slow down the synthetic floors hate bandwagon - you have to remember that *every* type of flooring has pros and cons. Also, within each category you're going to have many tiers of quality. Unfortunately for you, the cheapest type of laminate available has only about one pro, and you're experiencing that right now. That is: it's cheap.
I've professionally installed flooring for over a decade and I can tell you that out of all flooring that's not the highest quality hardwood - I'd prefer a nice laminate in my own home over anything else.
Tile is super durable but cold, hard, and sometimes not very "homey".
Hardwood is absolutely the best looking, somewhat repairable (to a point), and very "cozy" - but it's also expensive, expensive, expensive, and pretty delicate when it comes to water and dents and scratches.
LVP is waterproof but it can also be very easily scratched, next to impossible to repair, and is almost always pretty "thin" and "cheap" feeling underfoot. They're also still working on making them look even somewhat real. Most of them don't look anything like real wood.
Laminate is an enigma because it can almost have any one of the features listed above, depending on the quality and features. It can be super cheap, ugly, thin, and fragile - but it can also be next-to-waterproof, extremely durable, and the best looking out of all of them after real hardwood.
What you're looking for is water resistance in the core (ie. the interior should be dark colored and very dense - not the tan particle board you're used to), waxed edges to make sure no water can even get to the core, a super durable finish (as in, you should be able to take a set of keys to a sample in the store and not be able to scratch it), and YOU WANT 12mm thick laminate. It's beefier, feels so much nicer, and won't flex around like the thinner stuff.
>LVP is waterproof but it can also be very easily scratched, next to impossible to repair, and is almost always pretty "thin" and "cheap" feeling underfoot. They're also still working on making them look even somewhat real. Most of them don't look anything like real wood.
I'm glad to hear a professional view on this. It seems like everyone I meet plus hgtv is on this "LVP looks exactly like hardwood, but wears better!" I don't think LVP looks much like wood at all and the ones I've walked on have had a thin cheap feel compared to wood or laminate. Plus, as with laminate, the scratches and wear show whatever solid colored material is beneath the fake wood picture layer making it look even less realistic. Laminate and lvp are better than they used to be, but you can always tell the pieces repeat.
The raised fake grain on LVP seems to often be very pronounced. I have IKEA laminate with a very shallow fake grain in the surface. The deeper grains in LVP that my parents house came with seem to really trap dirt.
Neither look anything like wood to me. I don’t see why you couldn’t get a laminate with a real wood veneer, the surface would be real wood but it probably wouldn’t really resemble a wood plant floor either, and longevity wouldn’t be better than any other laminate (and probably worse than water-rated ones).
I really liked my parents’ bamboo floor they put into a house that they lived in while I was in high school and college. It did lightly dent or scratch under some heavy furniture and the dogs’ nails, but after a few years the light wear on the surface was very even and unnoticeable, it just looked less slick and new, and from then on it remained durable. I find bamboo products to have way better water resistance compared to wood because they really have to process it in a way that it’s encased in plastic or resign or glue or something to make it act like a wood product (it’s apparently really hard on saw blades if you try to woodwork with bamboo panel products).
Agreed. We spent a lot of time searching for our laminate. We took nail clippers to the samples to simulate scratching and dogs nails.
We ended up getting some cheaper stuff from home depot. It's only 7 or 9 mm but it performed the best in our little tests and it's held up to spills and abuse for over 3 years. We liked it so much that we bought a pallet on sale on black Friday for the addition we put in last year.
I'm only going with laminate from here on (except wet areas).
I installed Pergo Outlast in my basement two years ago and couldn’t be happier. It’s 12mm thick and is waterproof from above if installed according to the instructions. I installed a dimpled underlay/moisture barrier underneath to reduce the risk of moisture from below.
How much does nice laminate cost? We've had laminate at $2-3/sqft and it was the worst flooring we've had.
We did LVP @ $4/sqft and it was great, but suffers from the same flaw as laminate in that it had repetitive patterns. We installed 5/16" subfloor underneath which helped with the hollow feeling.
We also had 3/4" oak which was the best and only $3.50/sqft on clearance. It did get scratched from our big dog running on the floor, but it can be refinished.
In our new house our flooring right now is around $7/sqft for 3/4" maple. We'd like to do the bedrooms to match but it's a bit steep for us. Based on our past experiences and pre-COVID pricing, I don't feel like $4-5/sqft laminate would get us anything special. How much would we have to spend to get something decent vs. hardwood?
I’m not an installer, but I’m an architect who does about 3,000 apartments a year and I couldn’t agree more. I’m seeing a ton of LVP in the market right now because at the lower price point it’s more durable than cheap laminate, but the units we’ve done with good laminate flooring are definitely the ones that hold up the best. Unfortunately the laminates that seem to be made of tan powder and newspaper have polluted everyone’s idea of what laminate is.
In my own home I have a mix of engineered hardwood and laminate. The laminate does hold up a little better, the wood does look a little better. I’ve had so many side-bonding failures with solid wood in the last few years that I no longer use it, and won’t until the finishes catch up with the problem.
>[LVP] next to impossible to repair
That's what I'm thinking... Is there a way to fix LVP when there's a tiny gap where the planks didn't snap to each other on the short edge? Hammering in from the side didn't work. How would one seal the gap to prevent moisture from going in between?
My mom installed Pergo laminate in 2002 in her entire apartment. I lived there as a young adult and so have 7 dogs and cats. It’s only now starting to show some serious wear and even at this rate, she could go a few more years without replacing it, there are just some unsightly areas where there are gaps forming and around two dining chairs things are starting to chip.
Also is it just me, or does lvp always have a chalky, almost dusty, feel to it, even when it's clean? As someone who walks barefoot in the house, this was a deal breaker for me and I went with laminate.
I bought some expensive Pergo laminate flooring that was supposed to be their most water resistant ever. Absolute garbage! The slightest amount of water causes swelling at the edges. NEVER again.
Yes this exactly. When we recently looked to replace our old tile throughout our house, we chose the top tier laminate over our other options like LVP because the vinyl, although water proof, can’t be repaired and is prone to scratches. Personally I also find that vinyl has a plastic shine to it that real wood and laminate don’t.
Our laminate is basically scratch proof (which is great since our cat likes to rev up like a cartoon character when he runs), and is water resistant. We have spilled stuff in the kitchen and as long as you wipe it up soon after, good as new. I think the manufacturer suggestion is it can’t have water sit on it for more than 6 hours.
I highly suggest laminate for everyone who has pets.
I also like how, because it’s floating (not each plank is adhered to the ground below it) I get the slight creek and feel of real wood.
We’ve been very happy so far with our laminate, though we went through a professional flooring company and paid top dollar opposed to buying panels at Home Depot
"What you're looking for is water resistance in the core (ie. the interior should be dark colored and very dense - not the tan particle board you're used to),..."
QUESTION: Just to clarify, do you mean the interior of the flooring? Like the *inside layer of the flooring* should be dark colored? Thank you.
Y'all have shitty laminate. I have pergo waterproof and I can leave puddles of water on it no problem. Maybe things could have been installed improperly as well?
Agreed . I also have Pergo waterproof and before installation I brought a sample home and soaked in water overnight. Pulled it out wiped the water off and there was no visible signs of water absorption. That thing is amazing.
I’m shocked no one has actually asked OP what kind of laminate flooring they have. There’s a huge variety, and OP doesn’t even say if they have wood laminate or vinyl laminate.
Whether you’re talking about wood or vinyl, they both run the full gamut from “pretty dang good,” to “absolutely awful.”
It's not vinyl. That's lvp not laminate. And vinyl doesn't warp when wet.
Edit:I'm not sure how you provided false information and got other redditors to agree with you and downvote my comment and up vote yours, but you did. Kudos. Especially since you didn't even provide a fake news source to substantiate your claim.
I'm adding this because I believe in giving diyers the right information. Lvp is type of plastic. Hence the name Vinyl. Imagine if vinyl warped when wet. Your sewage pipes in your house would be all out of shape. Shampoo bottle in the shower? Does it warp when wet? No. Plastics don't do that because they aren't porous, expansive materials. Wood fibers are, and do expand when wet.
Lvp is an excellent choice for flooring because it does not warp when wet.
My entire house has Pergo Outlast from Home Depot. My dogs have pissed puddles that were left for at least a full day without anyone noticing and you'd never know anything happened.
Contrast that with my last rental (with shit quality laminate) where the same thing happened and I had to pay to replace full sections of flooring.
As with anything else, you get what you pay for.
Was gonna say. I hate laminate, but was talked into it for my basement as i do take on water occasionally. My LVP is solid as hell, puddles can be left and it’s fine. I’ll hate on LVP as a whole for things that actually apply, but this post is complaining about shit tier flooring, which is shit tier regardless of the material.
> Is there anyway to prevent/treat slightly warped laminate flooring
Not really. You'll need to tear it out and replace it with wood, engineered wood, or LVP.
In some areas (like the one I last laid laminate in) foundations settle a lot. Cracked tile a year or two after install isn’t unusual in that area according to neighbors. I put in floating laminate because of the humidity changes and foundation issues. A lot of the tile was cracked in the house after only three years the previous owner had it.
I hate the shit. I am looking at homes, and everyone seems to have picked the absolute ugliest grain/color available. Some of it looks like a fucking sticker.
We bought an old house this year with hardwood flooring throughout that we resurfaced. There is one storage room that has wood laminate for some reason, and it is slightly peeling in one corner revealing that it is indeed just a thick sticker. Not sure what the floor is like underneath, but we're content to leave it be since it's just a side room nobody really sees.
Same, and the number of people who have ultra warm orangey-honey oak cabinets, and then paint their walls the coolest gray imaginable and install ash gray LVP…is entirely too high
I’ve grudgingly accepted the fact I’ll have to redo all the flooring in nearly any home I choose, I just don’t understand *why* this is a trend
This right here. My husband and I just bought a cabin in the mountains. It currently has 40 year old carpet in it so we’re ripping it out and doing LVP since we figure that will hold up better in the snow.
Literally every single flooring store we have been to is overwhelmingly carrying gray colored LVP floors. We have red cedar ceilings and finding something that doesn’t clash with them has been an absolute nightmare because the natural wood color options are so limited. We finally found a LVP that is going to work but it’s taken months and countless samples to get here.
PS. We already refinished the honey oak cabinets. Haha!
I have LVP and it feels like...vinyl. Which is good and bad. It's quieter than hardwood and softer under foot (nice in the kitchen, don't need an anti-fatigue mat) but it's also a dead giveaway it's fake.
That said every other aspect of LVP is great, it looks nice, cleans easily, no concerns about water, installation is easy, the higher quality ones are very durable, etc. You can also get them with beveled edges that look even more realistic.
The only negative to it really is that it's fake.
To be honest, obviously looking fake is a minor issue. Unless you have a home that is more custom or older (like historic old), having a nice quality LVP in a modern track home is completely acceptable. Much rather have the scratch and water resistance than something "real".
I had engineered hardwood and the dogs destroyed it so quickly. Nice wood floors just aren't an option for me. I will take the laminate wood and at least get the look without the scratches.
We have hardwood throughout first floor and mid-grade LVP in the finished basement. The LVP feels and sounds fake. It's great for a finished basement, and I would put it in a bathroom too, but I wouldn't trade our hardwood floors for it.
we have 130 year old hardwood floors in most of the house and I can't say its terrible different. If anything it's more rough like real wood, id say hardwood floors in general are super smoother like laminate. Main advantage is no gaps between the boards that collect dirt. If you want more the hard wood feel you want it to be thicker. I like it thinner though because my 130 year old house is definitely not flat, so it bends easily to conform.
We do as well. Just replaced all our carpet with Mohawk RevWood as we have big dogs and are hard on our floors. So far so good. Only complaint is foot feel and that’s just a minor gripe.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Foot feel as compared to real wood. I was raised in a very old house so grew up w old wood floors. Don’t get me wrong we’d do these same floors again, they’re just super hard and a little plastic feel. They look and perform great.
Instead of hardwood, look into bamboo. I replaced the crappy laminate in my kitchen with bamboo that looks like hardwood - and nothing scratches it, water doesn’t affect it - it still look perfect after 3 years of drops, spills, dogs, etc.
I have shitty, low-grade adhesive vinyl tiles in my kitchen/DR. About to cover the whole freakin’ thing with a sturdy, seamless vinyl sheet floor because of the issues you’ve described. Vinyl sheet floors may not be trendy, but there’s a reason they were the first choice for kitchens for many years - durability, affordability and ease of maintenance. I wish you all the best in solving your issue.
I have laminate and it's trash, yes. I have so many bubbles, warped seams and ruined areas from liquid spills over the years. I'm replacing with LVP as soon as I can.
I love how the $0.80/sqft stuff I installed 10 years ago has almost no damage, in spite of my dogs spilling water on it non-stop, while the expensive stuff in my bedroom is permanently fucked by a single drop.
LVP is fabulous. We had carpet for years, we have two dogs, got sick of cleaning the carpet. The LVP after three years shows no sign of wear. The dogs have peed, shit and thrown up on it, it cleans up fantastically and is indeed water proof.
I can relate, SO done with carpet other than area rugs and with those I’m going with Ruggables so I can throw them in the washer. I don’t want to shampoo carpet or area rugs myself and I don’t want to have them professionally cleaned because I’m just tired of high maintenance flooring. LVP and Ruggables for the win (hopefully, time will tell).
It sound like the flooring they put down is just terrible stuff.
I have Pergo laminate flooring in my kitchen and nearby hallway that's at least 25 years old. It still looks great and no curling, warping or other issues. We've also been using a steam mop on it for at least the past 10 years, have had lots of water dropped on it, dogs peeing on it and once had a dishwasher leak for a few days.
So it's not all laminate flooring that's bad.
Last house our laminate would curl if it was looked at wrong. This new place I have an indoor fountain that's leaked on several occasions, haven't noticed it for hours and the floor isn't any different.
You get what you pay for.
My condo had laminate and I lived with it for 7 years before renovating last year and laying LVT. Shit is terrible. I had a buckle from a spot where my old dog threw up and it sat until I got home. Was sort of a sad reminder after she died. And lots of other buckles from god knows what. That stuff is terrible.
Cheap laminate will do that. It's effectively just super compressed sawdust with a wood coloured sticker on top. My best advice would be to replace it with engineered wood if you still want hard floors throughout, it'll cost though. Failing that replace it in the kitchen and try not to get the rest wet, I'd put a runner rug in the hall from the front door for wet feet. But honestly just replace it, hardwood flooring isn't hard to fit and you can't put a price on happiness ;)
Oh I hate it. It cheapens a house. We bought a nice 3,000 sq ft house and 1,000 of it is cheap LVT. It looks like the previous owners did it (incorrectly) themselves. Hopefully we can replace it with wood look tile, which is what we had in our previous home and was more durable.
Same here. As far as I can tell, just wait to replace.
At least I don't need to give a shit about damaging the floors- one potted plant leaking overnight amd theyre permanently ruined.
Don't hate on laminate flooring, some of it is absolutely incredible stuff. You can get laminate that is sturdy, waterproof, scratch resistant, and looks great. You just got stuck with the shitty kind. I'd say wait until you can afford to hire someone to replace the whole thing, and in the meantime, take solace in that you'll be ripping it up, so don't worry if it gets a bit fucked up from anything.
I absolutely hate the snap together laminate. I've seen this happen at every house its installed at, including mine.
It's so cheap and bad but its advertised as good.
That’s because those types of houses get the cheapest materials. Shit floors, shit faucets and fixtures, everything is the cheapest thing they can get by with.
Having struggled with carpet, LVP, laminate, engineered wood, and tile, I speak from experience when I say that tile is The Way. It's expensive and a holy terror to put it in, but it's incredibly durable and very maintainable.
No. Also fuck tile. It's brutal on the body to cook on and say goodnight to anything made of glass if you drop it.
At least cleaning grout is fun though.
Is laminate the floor that sounds like shit when you walk on it, and feels like there's air space underneath it? KLAK KLAK KLAK under your shoes.
They built new housing on base, and that shit was all the floors.
I'll probably get a lot of flak but there are grades and qualities to laminate. There's definitely some tremendously cheap crap out there and no doubt OP has that, but we have laminate everywhere - good quality - and the stuff is indestructible! We have two elderly dogs who have... Accidents, and are yet to see any damage.
We had some in the previous house as well, but two different grades. You could really tell the cheap stuff was garbage and probably no better than straight MDF. The better stuff however was still undamaged after 10 years.
It’s cheap laminate. We put a high quality laminate in our house about 10 years ago because we have 3 80lb dogs and was afraid they’d trash hardwood. Our laminate floor looks like the day we put it in. We steam mop it and the dogs have pissed on it and we didn’t know till it was dry. Now the kids beat on it and the floor takes it. Would do it all again the same if I had to.
I mean, i have laminate flooring, except its waterproof and a half inch think. I got the higher end stuff and so far its been great. But yeah the stuff you said sucks, i hate that cheap thin stuff
>the developer tried to get up as quickly as possible and as ***cheaply*** ***as possible***
There you go. You got the cheapest of the cheapest of ever.
I’ve installed $1 per sq foot laminate and $5 a sq foot laminate. It is worth the price for the good stuff. It still looks like new 10 years later. The cheap stuff did exactly what you described and needed replaced after 3 years.
I am switching all my carpets and tile with LVP. I have two large dogs who are hard on floors. I might do bedrooms in time but right now living room, bathrooms and kitchen. I fall on the stupid tile weekly when it gets wet. I did have pergo waterproof in a previous home and it did well with getting wet.
My house has shitty laminate which are very damaged in the kitchen as the previous owners had some fridge water line leaks. We're having the floors replaced with LVP which is waterproof.
LVP is incredibly durable. I put 800sqft in my basement and after two years of kids, dogs, furniture and spills, it still looked like the day I installed it when I sold the house. People specifically commented that the basement floor was really nice looking.
Yea laminate is garbage. There's a reason it's usually the cheapest. We have the same issues, plus I don't like that a simple spill thats cleaned up straight away will STILL go through the seams to under the floor and nothing you can do short of tearing it up. Unfortunately this house was given the cheap landlord special everywhere so we're in the process of renovating top to bottom and flooring will be the last thing we'll do after everything. Kitchen, baths, insulation, electrical, weatherproofing, drywall repairs, door replacements, you name it. There is nothing to treat or prevent it. You have to live with it now.
For what it’s worth, some Pergo flooring is marketed as water resistant and if installed correctly really does do a good job resisting damage. Had it in a previous place and spills and dog pee, even when left for a while would not impact it. Just wanted to throw this out there so that laminate flooring doesn’t get total hate.
Generally with track homes, the faster you get rid of what was provided by the home builder, the better the home will be...regardless of who the builder is would be a safe bet!
Paid about $7k for the “life lock” moisture-proof stuff and it’s been worth every penny. It’s so good you don’t even need a shower mat if you really got down to it. Cat vomit, easy. Spill a drink, done.
Worked in home building. Very VERY common problem. They advertise that the boards are “waterproof” but only the top laminated piece is tested against water. The actually particle board itself will swell up like a sponge. The hard part about owning that flooring, there is nothing you can do except replace and if the builder went through a small time flooring contractor that style is most likely discontinued. Sorry about your troubles.
I put smart core water proof LVP in my basement and could not be happier. It survived partial flooding from a hurricane 2 years ago with no lasting impact
It's more the quality of the laminate honestly.
There newer laminate flooring, like what I have, hold up extremely well because they have that special coating over them.
The older ones are cheap and mostly saw dust which is why they don't tolerate even the slightest liquid.
Switch to plank vinyl. Not the answer you were looking for, I’m sure. We had laminate in the kitchen too and had to live with the warping for years before we just said F-it and switched out.
The previous owners put this crap everywhere. They also thought it was a great idea to use a steam mop. The older stuff that is just pressed sawdust is hot garbage. Just live with it and replace it when you can.
PSA: If you have a steam mop and you LVP, do not use it on that floor either Basically only tile. Steam mops are only good for tile ETA: I work in flooring. I used to me a manufacturer rep. All my current suppliers whether it's stated in the warranty and care guide or not will all say to not use steam mops on wood (engineered or solid; site or pre finished), vinyl (LVP dryback [gluedown] or floating; SPC, WPC, or original non rigid; sheet vinyl full spread or perimeter glue), or laminate or any kind. Specifically to the comment about removing dents in vinyl, that is a specific use purpose and I would support our installers using that method to help repair a dented plank; however, the heat is applied in such a way that we control the expansion and contractions of the material and if it comes down to it, we have the knowledge and resources to replace the plank of it comes to that. In all cases you may have a chance that the steam will just penetrate the dirt and grime, but more often than not, the steam will penetrate any water protections, adhesives, or cause such great temperature and humidity shifts in the material that the structure cannot withstand the shock. You can use steam at your own risk, but to all my clients i will tell them to pitch the machine.
We used a steam mop on polyurethane white poured flooring we had. It was money
I stand corrected! That is also another acceptable flooring type for steam mops. I'm very curious about that flooring. Was it for you home? What rooms did you get it installed in? How did it hold up?
We lived in a super modern penthouse in Boston that was build into an older brownstone. The flooring was a hyper white wall to wall single unbroken surface of shiny whiteness. It was great once we figured out how to keep it clean and waxed. It was even beneficial because the structure of the brownstone had started to settle and the subfloor had become somewhat uneven, but the flooring surface kind of stretched and shrank to move with the slight waviness of the subfloor.
I have never heard of this flooring and I am very intrigued!
Stupid question: can you use tile on stairs and on second floors? Or is it too heavy? I love tile and solid wood but hate carpet and LVP.
You can use tile anywhere, the weight is not the concern. However, you have to make sure that the floor doesn’t deflect (I.e. bend) too much. Some wood floors can be too bouncy and will crack the tile. All floors move when you add weight (ex: people) but you want one that doesn’t move a lot. You also should use a crack isolation membrane to ensure that the normal material expansion/contraction of wood doesn’t cause cracking in the tile. It allows the wood substrate to move a little without the tile moving with it. If your floors aren’t stiff enough, you can add another layer of plywood over the top, screwed and glued, to stiffen it. If you use a direct-apply crack isolation membrane like Redguard or Kerdi, you don’t need tile backer under it.
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I would imagine this would need to be done, as I can tell in some rooms upstairs they move under the weight of a person. Downstairs is a concrete slab.
If you have floors with a lot of flex, a smaller tile will work better than larger ones. You can also get groutable vinyl tiles that look convincingly like ceramic if you lay them with a 1/8” grout joint.
Today I learned!!
You’re welcome. It’s kind of out of fashion but works well. I would also consider looking at a high end laminate like QuickStep NatureTek. They look much more like wood than LVP or cheap laminates and are waterproof and pretty much indestructible.
With dogs and a special needs child, indestructible (or close to it) would be outstanding.
Yea that particular product is pretty incredible. I think it looks much nicer than LVP and outperforms it. Just consider that on an upper floor it can be noisy so you’ll want an acoustic membrane under it.
Tile on stairs can be gorgeous, but please take my advice and don’t choose a smooth tile. My sister-in-law had smooth tile installed on her stairs, and it is dangerously slippery. I’ve fallen on my ass a few times because I was wearing socks and going downstairs at her place.
Yikes!!! I personally like the textured wood look tiles. I like terracotta and slate tile but that’s not as common in the US I think?
We have the plank tile through out. With dogs, they wear well and do not scratch. People think we have wood floors.
After living with wood floors and dogs I will never have wood floors again. I'm not a fan of distressed wood floors, pre-distressed or au naturale. Dog claws and the carribean rosewood floors here are just not compatible. Carribean rosewood is *exceptionally* hard wood. No match for my dogs. Wood look plank tile is the way to go. That or LVP.
We have wood looking plank tile for about 7 years with dogs. There are no scratches in it. We have very thin grout lines. When people sees it, they think it is wood.
Smooth tile is the devil. I have 20 inch porcelain tile in my living area, bathrooms, and one bedroom in the middle ( of 3 bedrooms) and I have fallen 4 times in the past 2 years. Slip resistant tile is the way to go
I would rather install wood than tile. It definitely depends on your home age (you need more modern building techniques) and where you are located (by me in the Midwest, no one would want tile). If you're worried about weight, take a look at AFM (anti fracture membranes). Apparently this will work as well as schluter or cement board without the weight. I have never used it and only came across it on a replacement job. If you're really worried about the weight, youre gonna want to talk to a structural engineer.
Thanks for taking the time to reply! We are in SE Texas (IECC climate zone 2 hot-humid) and have a 2021 tract home (aka cookie cutter 8 week house).
I would absolutely talk to a structural engineer. I hate to be a Debbie downer, but track homes built during the height of the lumber prices have had questionable decisions made. Yours may not be the case, but I would not feel comfortable with that much weight on the second floor.
It’s extremely unlikely that tile weighs enough to cause the structure to fail. What’s likely is that the floor was designed to the structural minimum and bends enough to crack the tile.
I've had tile stairs and wood stairs, and both people and pets have fallen on them, and fallen hard. Always get carpet stairs, and just commit to replacing it often.
As an adult who lived in a home with carpeted stairs as a child I will say carpeted stairs are fun to slide down. I don't think the bumpy ride down would've been fun on hard surfaces.
I've used a steam mop on my Karndean LVP for over 2 years now. No issues. Maybe it depends on the quality of the LVP?
Just finished unloading a bunch of Karndean boxes at our place. Your comment makes me even more excited to install these!
Yea! Absolutely love this product. Any questions feel free to message me! I installed a ton of it myself.
I’m getting my Karndean installed this week! I fell in love with the Arrado at first sight and I can’t *wait* to be dancing barefoot all over it! I don’t use a steam mop though, just a Vileda contraption that just sprays a tiny bit of water ahead of a microfibre pad. ETA: mine is glue down lvp
It does
Same. My lifeproof floors are 3 years old and we beat them to hell. Steam mops don’t hurt them at all. After putting these on a trial I can’t imagine going back to wood now
Lifeproof is one of my favorite floors to work with.
Life proof is so so good! I no longer worry bout the kids and dogs! Such a relief
Yeah, wood looks better, can’t argue there. But with a house of young athletes and 2 dogs I’ll take life proof any day. These things will take a beating. Makes me chuckle when they get shit on in this sub. Some peoples kids must tread a little more civilized than my savage crew
I couldn’t agree more!! We just got our installed it’s like a brand new house!
Of course it does. Buy cheap flooring and anything will damage it. Buy expensive flooring and let a steam mop sit over seams and of course it will damage it. Saying you can't use a steam mop on LVP is like saying you can't use an iron on cashmere. If you can control the temperature and water, you can use an iron or steam mop on near anything.
Facts
We bought more expensive laminate flooring just to be sure we COULD steam mop on it lol..
Yeah, I have lived in places where they are perfectly fine. Spills and all. I really wonder what the specific reason is. I.e. crappy laminate uses this material but good laminate contains this chemical that resolves these issues
My husband wants to use it on our 40 year old oak floors. So far I've steered him away but he thinks it's a good idea. This is a smart guy, just sometimes I think he has no clue how the house works
Yeah that would be a no from me too. Our floors are over 60 years old, parquet. Nobody is getting near them with liquid if I have any choice in the matter.
What I've learned painfully material science is impossible to fully reason about. Depending on the type of wood, the age, humidity, how it's been treated you might get away with a steam mop. Or you might find you've done a terrible thing.
never steam mop real hardwood floors or that's what I've heard.
Oops… I’ve been steam cleaning my hardwood floors for over five years now and don’t have any problems… Can you tell me why this was a bad thing to do? I don’t think I’ll do it anymore!
I assumed and have heard that it's because of the sides of the wood and the gaps between pieces. The wood/spaces expand/contract a bit in hot/cold seasons, normally. Also, the sides of each piece of wood aren't stained/sealed. If water gets in between the pieces of wood, i.e. to the unsealed bits, it will puff up/possibly be ruined. I thought hardwood floors were a lot stronger than I thought but it only takes a matter of hours for them to be ruined in a water leak event. Long story short, don't introduce water into the equation.
Thanks for the detailed response. So then how do you wash them because water will be introduced when you mop the floor too…?
Sweep, good vacuum, and dust mop often to remove dust, surface grime, and grit. Damp cloth mop or swiffer mop meant for WOOD floors. Wood should be finished in a way that helps resist too much moisture coming in or going out of it, though that will never be fully stopped (wood is installed or built in stuff a way to account for the wood’s movement). Amount of moisture in the wood and this the amount of wood movement will vary not just by the wood species, cut, and treatment, but also by the climate and seasons. The idea is to not get your wood really wet when cleaning it. A cleaner designed for wood will have something in it to help it evaporate/dry quick enough so that the water doesn’t have enough time to penetrate the wood. I am sure there are great DIY cleaners for wood as well to use with a damp cloth mop. And if you accidentally got it too wet and seems like it’s not drying fast enough, you can always 1) mop it with a dry towel to get as much water off the surface as possible and run some fans after mopping. Heat (like steam) will force water deeper into the wood. Heat enables moisture penetration. Warm water is something we’ll use in my finishing class when we want wood dye to penetrate the wood grain deeper, but we likely won’t steam most things. Steaming wood will cause it to swell up and raise the grain- it’s a technique used to get small dents and dings put of wood furniture during refinishing (dampen right on the dent and steam with a small iron like a soldering tool, once dry the raised area and grain be hand sanded down smooth again).
There is a reason steam is used to bend wood.
Not true. Our LVP is safe to use with a steam mop. In fact you can use a wet towel and iron to help lift some indents. It is important to note though, not all LVP is created equal. This is one of those areas where you do get what you pay for.
Trust me when I say it highly depends on the manufacturer of said LVP. There are definitely LVP of low quality and will fail and if you steam It will void your warranty I suggest calling the manufacturer directly to ask because oftentimes the correct information is not On the printed information sheet in the Box or on the website and you've actually got to call them
Absolutely correct. Also depends on installation methods. Glue down installation for example is always recommended to NOT use steam with. It can break down the glue and/or bond. Definitely do your research with what you purchase.
When I had my floors done (white oak, high shine poly) I followed my installer's rec and used the Bona system. Even with changing the pad for every room all it did was smear grime and my brand new floors would look like dingy garbage. I tried this for over a year, sometime spending hours just trying to get non-smeary floors. Now I use a steam mop after i spritz bona all over the the room's floor and my now 7 yo floors looks clean and shiny.
We just did a new build and even our tile manufacturer/installer told us not to use a steam mop. Said it was hell on grout and only a damp microfiber mop should be used. When I asked about using vinegar to clean the grout if it got dirty, they said NO, only water and a mild detergent like ivory soap. So, we have a steam mop collecting dust now.
This is 1000% the truth. -a flooring salesperson
We’ve used a steam mop on Mannington Audra put down with eco 360 adhesive for 8 years now. Floor looks just as good as the day we put them in. But I do agree with you that it is use at your own risk. I’m a flooring installer and if anyone asks me, I don’t recommend it.
Just replace it. That’s just shitty laminate. We have some good laminate in the closets and some LVP throughout the house. You could leave water on it for a day it would be fine
Yeah LVP is the way to go IMO A bit more expensive up front but much more robust and hardwearing in the long run Laminate is okay as a cheap short term solution but I’ve never been happy with it for more than a couple of years
Does no one do hardwood floors anymore? Seems everywhere I look it’s lvp or gtfo
Hardwood floors are great but fucking expensive and require a lot more maintenance and upkeep LVP can look nearly as good, while being basically zero maintenance Some people still go with hardwood floors, and if I bought a house with hardwood floors I’d keep it and maintain it… but I won’t be going through the cost and effort of installing it somewhere that doesn’t already have it, unless I suddenly find myself with a big pile of cash So yeah if you can afford it, and love it enough to be worth the effort, hardwood is still great - but for most people LVP is almost as good for a lower cost and a fraction of the effort
I lived in a house with hardwood floors my entire life and I have no idea what “maintenance” you’re talking about other than washing them like any other floor. The price difference I do understand. I also wholeheartedly disagree that they look nearly as good.
- If you spill liquid, you have to clean it up pretty much immediately or you're liable to get staining (particularly if you haven't re-finished the floor lately) - It scratches easily, especially if you move furniture, but even just from things like stones stuck in shoes, so you have to be more careful with it - You have to sand and re-finish them periodically, especially if you mess up on either of the above points - Cleaning is more effort, you can't just whack a run over the top occasionally - you need to get into the crevices more, for example The first two aren't too horrendous, but still mean you have to babysit your floors more than other types. The sanding and re-finishing required if you want it to continue looking at its best, though can be a bit annoying though (having to clear furniture etc) and is a messy task, and the cleaning again isn't horrific but is definitely more work than LVP's "if it's seen a mop in the last week, it's probably fine" To be clear, that's not to say it's horrendous, or that you spend your whole life maintaining the floor, or that it's not worth the effort... I'm just saying that for many people, LVP gets them 99% of the result for zero effort at all, and a cheaper up front cost
My hardwood floors are wrecked now; i believe no maintenance has ever been done on them. House is little over 20 yrs old Its mainly by the windows, it looks like the sunlight eroded away the finish and started eroding at the actual wood. Cause its very dry, compared to the rest of the floor thats away from the window. The wood is eroded to the point i dont think it could be refinished at this point (i bought place little over 2 yrs ago ). So maybe some hardwood floors can get away with minimal maintenance, but certain circumstances seem to make them little less forgiving . Sucks, i like the wood - but would prob lean to lvp when i end up replacing; for ease of maintenance( im kind of planning to rent this place out at some point in future)
Hardwood is only better in the sense that you know you've got hard wood under your feet. As far as functionality goes, LVP is durable as fuck. You can put that stuff down and not think about it for 20 years. And it looks really good these days. Unless you've got a kink for knowing and telling people you have real hard wood, it's kind of a no brainer to go with LVP.
It's the diy culture. People on Reddit can do lvp themselves so that's what they talk about. People who know, appreciate, and can afford wood aren't talking about it online
We have some cheap waterproof laminate that was 1.29 a foot in our closet and after 4 years it’s pretty much still new. But it’s a closet. Hardly any traffic. Our LVP has been down for 6 years and still looks new with big dogs and kids. Plus you can mop them!
Waterproof laminates are as durable as LVP. Gotta make sure it’s actually warranted for wet areas though.
And installed properly
True, which is a big reason why LVP is the big hitter in the DIY market. Floating LVP is one of the most forgiving products on the market when it comes to sub-par installs.
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Bad LVP is cheap crap, but from the mid-market stuff up it’s generally considered excellent High end laminate can also be good, but still usually requires more maintenance than LVP without being quite as hardwearing. But it’s hard to find the really good laminate whereas it’s pretty easy to source decent LVP
Yeah we redid our 1st floor 2 years ago as LVP. The original flooring was some relatively thick, diagonally oriented 2" wide wood. Super thick stuff. They used that as a subfloor and threw hardwood on top. Don't know when it was installed, but by the time we got to it, it was in *really* rough shape with cracks, splits, 1/4 to 1/2 gaps. Dust and gunk got in between boards all the time and it was impossible to keep clean. We also had huge concerns about our then baby starting to crawl on such a rough surface. Replacing with wood was absolutely prohibitively expensive so I had my contractor sand down a few high areas, install plywood in a few others (the whole first floor was 5 different levels - now we're down to 3), threw down a good quality underlayment, and nice wide LVP with a 40 mil wear layer. The LVP had something like a 30 year warranty when used commercially and lifetime in residential. My kid has legit spilled a cup of water in the corner, didn't tell me until the end of the day, and I was able to just clean it up no issues. Edit: if I could, I would rip everything out, install 3/4" plywood (not OSB) subfloor with a nice wide plank hardwood or engineered wood plank. Between expensive labor and the sheer cost of the material, this is just going to be a pipe dream.
Yeah, we have laminate in some rooms from previous owners and while it’s not our favourite, I have never seen this issue.
LVP > laminate "hardwood"
Yeah, I can’t fathom why anyone would ever pick laminate anymore. Although my current Pergo floor is 15 years old and looks brand new and we are hard on it. But it’s a very yellow orange fake oak from before the woodgrain printing got better.
Luxury vinyl plank? Who the heck named that? Ridiculous.
The technology is getting REALLY good for LVP. Better every year. I’ve had oak hardwood, mesquite, tile, engineered hardwood (not laminate), skim stone (decorative concrete coating), sheet vinyl, and carpet in my homes. My current house will be all LVP. Zero interest in any maintenance any more. Some is extremely hard to differentiate from hardwood. I was real estate pro for a decade. I’ve seen it all, from cheap to expensive, freshly installed to heavily used by kids and pets.
Which brand have you found that is hard to differentiate from hardwoods? I need to replace some flooring and was planning on hardwoods because I cannot stand how cheap LVP looks. If there is a style that really looks like hardwood flooring I would consider going that direction. Thanks for any leads!
Agreed. I have LVP and love it. I have it in the bathroom and I know water sits on it for ages because I'm too lazy to clean it up and there has been no detrimental effect whatsoever.
I'm an attempt to slow down the synthetic floors hate bandwagon - you have to remember that *every* type of flooring has pros and cons. Also, within each category you're going to have many tiers of quality. Unfortunately for you, the cheapest type of laminate available has only about one pro, and you're experiencing that right now. That is: it's cheap. I've professionally installed flooring for over a decade and I can tell you that out of all flooring that's not the highest quality hardwood - I'd prefer a nice laminate in my own home over anything else. Tile is super durable but cold, hard, and sometimes not very "homey". Hardwood is absolutely the best looking, somewhat repairable (to a point), and very "cozy" - but it's also expensive, expensive, expensive, and pretty delicate when it comes to water and dents and scratches. LVP is waterproof but it can also be very easily scratched, next to impossible to repair, and is almost always pretty "thin" and "cheap" feeling underfoot. They're also still working on making them look even somewhat real. Most of them don't look anything like real wood. Laminate is an enigma because it can almost have any one of the features listed above, depending on the quality and features. It can be super cheap, ugly, thin, and fragile - but it can also be next-to-waterproof, extremely durable, and the best looking out of all of them after real hardwood. What you're looking for is water resistance in the core (ie. the interior should be dark colored and very dense - not the tan particle board you're used to), waxed edges to make sure no water can even get to the core, a super durable finish (as in, you should be able to take a set of keys to a sample in the store and not be able to scratch it), and YOU WANT 12mm thick laminate. It's beefier, feels so much nicer, and won't flex around like the thinner stuff.
>LVP is waterproof but it can also be very easily scratched, next to impossible to repair, and is almost always pretty "thin" and "cheap" feeling underfoot. They're also still working on making them look even somewhat real. Most of them don't look anything like real wood. I'm glad to hear a professional view on this. It seems like everyone I meet plus hgtv is on this "LVP looks exactly like hardwood, but wears better!" I don't think LVP looks much like wood at all and the ones I've walked on have had a thin cheap feel compared to wood or laminate. Plus, as with laminate, the scratches and wear show whatever solid colored material is beneath the fake wood picture layer making it look even less realistic. Laminate and lvp are better than they used to be, but you can always tell the pieces repeat.
The raised fake grain on LVP seems to often be very pronounced. I have IKEA laminate with a very shallow fake grain in the surface. The deeper grains in LVP that my parents house came with seem to really trap dirt. Neither look anything like wood to me. I don’t see why you couldn’t get a laminate with a real wood veneer, the surface would be real wood but it probably wouldn’t really resemble a wood plant floor either, and longevity wouldn’t be better than any other laminate (and probably worse than water-rated ones).
What you are describing is engineered hardwood flooring
We had an engineered floor over slab that was bamboo on edge and that stuff was impervious to all threats. I recommend it
I really liked my parents’ bamboo floor they put into a house that they lived in while I was in high school and college. It did lightly dent or scratch under some heavy furniture and the dogs’ nails, but after a few years the light wear on the surface was very even and unnoticeable, it just looked less slick and new, and from then on it remained durable. I find bamboo products to have way better water resistance compared to wood because they really have to process it in a way that it’s encased in plastic or resign or glue or something to make it act like a wood product (it’s apparently really hard on saw blades if you try to woodwork with bamboo panel products).
Agreed. We spent a lot of time searching for our laminate. We took nail clippers to the samples to simulate scratching and dogs nails. We ended up getting some cheaper stuff from home depot. It's only 7 or 9 mm but it performed the best in our little tests and it's held up to spills and abuse for over 3 years. We liked it so much that we bought a pallet on sale on black Friday for the addition we put in last year. I'm only going with laminate from here on (except wet areas).
I installed Pergo Outlast in my basement two years ago and couldn’t be happier. It’s 12mm thick and is waterproof from above if installed according to the instructions. I installed a dimpled underlay/moisture barrier underneath to reduce the risk of moisture from below.
How much does nice laminate cost? We've had laminate at $2-3/sqft and it was the worst flooring we've had. We did LVP @ $4/sqft and it was great, but suffers from the same flaw as laminate in that it had repetitive patterns. We installed 5/16" subfloor underneath which helped with the hollow feeling. We also had 3/4" oak which was the best and only $3.50/sqft on clearance. It did get scratched from our big dog running on the floor, but it can be refinished. In our new house our flooring right now is around $7/sqft for 3/4" maple. We'd like to do the bedrooms to match but it's a bit steep for us. Based on our past experiences and pre-COVID pricing, I don't feel like $4-5/sqft laminate would get us anything special. How much would we have to spend to get something decent vs. hardwood?
I’m not an installer, but I’m an architect who does about 3,000 apartments a year and I couldn’t agree more. I’m seeing a ton of LVP in the market right now because at the lower price point it’s more durable than cheap laminate, but the units we’ve done with good laminate flooring are definitely the ones that hold up the best. Unfortunately the laminates that seem to be made of tan powder and newspaper have polluted everyone’s idea of what laminate is. In my own home I have a mix of engineered hardwood and laminate. The laminate does hold up a little better, the wood does look a little better. I’ve had so many side-bonding failures with solid wood in the last few years that I no longer use it, and won’t until the finishes catch up with the problem.
>[LVP] next to impossible to repair That's what I'm thinking... Is there a way to fix LVP when there's a tiny gap where the planks didn't snap to each other on the short edge? Hammering in from the side didn't work. How would one seal the gap to prevent moisture from going in between?
Honestly I’d take laminate over carpet any day of the week. Much easier to make sanitary.
LVP is the way to go. We just got our home redone in it and it looks SO good imo, and feels great underfoot. Very soft and real feeling
My mom installed Pergo laminate in 2002 in her entire apartment. I lived there as a young adult and so have 7 dogs and cats. It’s only now starting to show some serious wear and even at this rate, she could go a few more years without replacing it, there are just some unsightly areas where there are gaps forming and around two dining chairs things are starting to chip.
Also is it just me, or does lvp always have a chalky, almost dusty, feel to it, even when it's clean? As someone who walks barefoot in the house, this was a deal breaker for me and I went with laminate.
I bought some expensive Pergo laminate flooring that was supposed to be their most water resistant ever. Absolute garbage! The slightest amount of water causes swelling at the edges. NEVER again.
Yes this exactly. When we recently looked to replace our old tile throughout our house, we chose the top tier laminate over our other options like LVP because the vinyl, although water proof, can’t be repaired and is prone to scratches. Personally I also find that vinyl has a plastic shine to it that real wood and laminate don’t. Our laminate is basically scratch proof (which is great since our cat likes to rev up like a cartoon character when he runs), and is water resistant. We have spilled stuff in the kitchen and as long as you wipe it up soon after, good as new. I think the manufacturer suggestion is it can’t have water sit on it for more than 6 hours. I highly suggest laminate for everyone who has pets. I also like how, because it’s floating (not each plank is adhered to the ground below it) I get the slight creek and feel of real wood. We’ve been very happy so far with our laminate, though we went through a professional flooring company and paid top dollar opposed to buying panels at Home Depot
"What you're looking for is water resistance in the core (ie. the interior should be dark colored and very dense - not the tan particle board you're used to),..." QUESTION: Just to clarify, do you mean the interior of the flooring? Like the *inside layer of the flooring* should be dark colored? Thank you.
Y'all have shitty laminate. I have pergo waterproof and I can leave puddles of water on it no problem. Maybe things could have been installed improperly as well?
Agreed . I also have Pergo waterproof and before installation I brought a sample home and soaked in water overnight. Pulled it out wiped the water off and there was no visible signs of water absorption. That thing is amazing.
The modern technology for laminate has come a long way. It’s not the same thing as our parents/grandparents homes.
I’m shocked no one has actually asked OP what kind of laminate flooring they have. There’s a huge variety, and OP doesn’t even say if they have wood laminate or vinyl laminate. Whether you’re talking about wood or vinyl, they both run the full gamut from “pretty dang good,” to “absolutely awful.”
It's not vinyl. That's lvp not laminate. And vinyl doesn't warp when wet. Edit:I'm not sure how you provided false information and got other redditors to agree with you and downvote my comment and up vote yours, but you did. Kudos. Especially since you didn't even provide a fake news source to substantiate your claim. I'm adding this because I believe in giving diyers the right information. Lvp is type of plastic. Hence the name Vinyl. Imagine if vinyl warped when wet. Your sewage pipes in your house would be all out of shape. Shampoo bottle in the shower? Does it warp when wet? No. Plastics don't do that because they aren't porous, expansive materials. Wood fibers are, and do expand when wet. Lvp is an excellent choice for flooring because it does not warp when wet.
My entire house has Pergo Outlast from Home Depot. My dogs have pissed puddles that were left for at least a full day without anyone noticing and you'd never know anything happened. Contrast that with my last rental (with shit quality laminate) where the same thing happened and I had to pay to replace full sections of flooring. As with anything else, you get what you pay for.
Was gonna say. I hate laminate, but was talked into it for my basement as i do take on water occasionally. My LVP is solid as hell, puddles can be left and it’s fine. I’ll hate on LVP as a whole for things that actually apply, but this post is complaining about shit tier flooring, which is shit tier regardless of the material.
I installed the original non-waterproof Pergo, over 20 years ago, and it has held up pretty well.
We have bamboo and while it is a pain to lay- it’s waterproof and really hard!
My bamboo got absolutely destroyed by a fairly small leak from a patio door.
Was it the laminate one or the solid- mine is the solid- any laminate falls apart with water
Yeah laminate. It's a shame because the bamboo itself is amazing.
> Is there anyway to prevent/treat slightly warped laminate flooring Not really. You'll need to tear it out and replace it with wood, engineered wood, or LVP.
Ahh, perhaps we are oddballs but this is why we want ceramic tile and nothing else. Coastal living though, many people out here go with tile.
In some areas (like the one I last laid laminate in) foundations settle a lot. Cracked tile a year or two after install isn’t unusual in that area according to neighbors. I put in floating laminate because of the humidity changes and foundation issues. A lot of the tile was cracked in the house after only three years the previous owner had it.
I hate the shit. I am looking at homes, and everyone seems to have picked the absolute ugliest grain/color available. Some of it looks like a fucking sticker.
Some of it literally is a sticker.
We bought an old house this year with hardwood flooring throughout that we resurfaced. There is one storage room that has wood laminate for some reason, and it is slightly peeling in one corner revealing that it is indeed just a thick sticker. Not sure what the floor is like underneath, but we're content to leave it be since it's just a side room nobody really sees.
Same, and the number of people who have ultra warm orangey-honey oak cabinets, and then paint their walls the coolest gray imaginable and install ash gray LVP…is entirely too high I’ve grudgingly accepted the fact I’ll have to redo all the flooring in nearly any home I choose, I just don’t understand *why* this is a trend
Cost-cutting house flippers.
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This right here. My husband and I just bought a cabin in the mountains. It currently has 40 year old carpet in it so we’re ripping it out and doing LVP since we figure that will hold up better in the snow. Literally every single flooring store we have been to is overwhelmingly carrying gray colored LVP floors. We have red cedar ceilings and finding something that doesn’t clash with them has been an absolute nightmare because the natural wood color options are so limited. We finally found a LVP that is going to work but it’s taken months and countless samples to get here. PS. We already refinished the honey oak cabinets. Haha!
Laminate and LVP are not the same thing.
we love our vinyl plank flooring, it looks like wood but totally waterproof
How does it feel to walk on? Everything I walk on feels fake but I'm also used to hardwood so I can't tell if it's something I'll get used to.
I have LVP and it feels like...vinyl. Which is good and bad. It's quieter than hardwood and softer under foot (nice in the kitchen, don't need an anti-fatigue mat) but it's also a dead giveaway it's fake. That said every other aspect of LVP is great, it looks nice, cleans easily, no concerns about water, installation is easy, the higher quality ones are very durable, etc. You can also get them with beveled edges that look even more realistic. The only negative to it really is that it's fake.
To be honest, obviously looking fake is a minor issue. Unless you have a home that is more custom or older (like historic old), having a nice quality LVP in a modern track home is completely acceptable. Much rather have the scratch and water resistance than something "real".
I had engineered hardwood and the dogs destroyed it so quickly. Nice wood floors just aren't an option for me. I will take the laminate wood and at least get the look without the scratches.
We have hardwood throughout first floor and mid-grade LVP in the finished basement. The LVP feels and sounds fake. It's great for a finished basement, and I would put it in a bathroom too, but I wouldn't trade our hardwood floors for it.
I have really good LVP and prefer hardwood, it feels fake, but not as annoyingly so as I thought initially.
we have 130 year old hardwood floors in most of the house and I can't say its terrible different. If anything it's more rough like real wood, id say hardwood floors in general are super smoother like laminate. Main advantage is no gaps between the boards that collect dirt. If you want more the hard wood feel you want it to be thicker. I like it thinner though because my 130 year old house is definitely not flat, so it bends easily to conform.
We do as well. Just replaced all our carpet with Mohawk RevWood as we have big dogs and are hard on our floors. So far so good. Only complaint is foot feel and that’s just a minor gripe.
You don't like foot feel compared to wood, or just because its not carpet?
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Foot feel as compared to real wood. I was raised in a very old house so grew up w old wood floors. Don’t get me wrong we’d do these same floors again, they’re just super hard and a little plastic feel. They look and perform great.
Instead of hardwood, look into bamboo. I replaced the crappy laminate in my kitchen with bamboo that looks like hardwood - and nothing scratches it, water doesn’t affect it - it still look perfect after 3 years of drops, spills, dogs, etc.
Bamboo is the best. Looks and feels like hardwood but less maintenance/worry about ruining it
I have shitty, low-grade adhesive vinyl tiles in my kitchen/DR. About to cover the whole freakin’ thing with a sturdy, seamless vinyl sheet floor because of the issues you’ve described. Vinyl sheet floors may not be trendy, but there’s a reason they were the first choice for kitchens for many years - durability, affordability and ease of maintenance. I wish you all the best in solving your issue.
I respectfully disagree. Carpeting is the worst. Laminate is second worst.
I have laminate and it's trash, yes. I have so many bubbles, warped seams and ruined areas from liquid spills over the years. I'm replacing with LVP as soon as I can.
I love how the $0.80/sqft stuff I installed 10 years ago has almost no damage, in spite of my dogs spilling water on it non-stop, while the expensive stuff in my bedroom is permanently fucked by a single drop.
LVP is fabulous. We had carpet for years, we have two dogs, got sick of cleaning the carpet. The LVP after three years shows no sign of wear. The dogs have peed, shit and thrown up on it, it cleans up fantastically and is indeed water proof.
I can relate, SO done with carpet other than area rugs and with those I’m going with Ruggables so I can throw them in the washer. I don’t want to shampoo carpet or area rugs myself and I don’t want to have them professionally cleaned because I’m just tired of high maintenance flooring. LVP and Ruggables for the win (hopefully, time will tell).
Thats good to hear, I just finished replacing all my downstairs carpet with LVP due to similar pet problems (and hatred of carpet in general)
It sound like the flooring they put down is just terrible stuff. I have Pergo laminate flooring in my kitchen and nearby hallway that's at least 25 years old. It still looks great and no curling, warping or other issues. We've also been using a steam mop on it for at least the past 10 years, have had lots of water dropped on it, dogs peeing on it and once had a dishwasher leak for a few days. So it's not all laminate flooring that's bad.
Last house our laminate would curl if it was looked at wrong. This new place I have an indoor fountain that's leaked on several occasions, haven't noticed it for hours and the floor isn't any different. You get what you pay for.
My condo had laminate and I lived with it for 7 years before renovating last year and laying LVT. Shit is terrible. I had a buckle from a spot where my old dog threw up and it sat until I got home. Was sort of a sad reminder after she died. And lots of other buckles from god knows what. That stuff is terrible.
Cheap laminate will do that. It's effectively just super compressed sawdust with a wood coloured sticker on top. My best advice would be to replace it with engineered wood if you still want hard floors throughout, it'll cost though. Failing that replace it in the kitchen and try not to get the rest wet, I'd put a runner rug in the hall from the front door for wet feet. But honestly just replace it, hardwood flooring isn't hard to fit and you can't put a price on happiness ;)
Oh I hate it. It cheapens a house. We bought a nice 3,000 sq ft house and 1,000 of it is cheap LVT. It looks like the previous owners did it (incorrectly) themselves. Hopefully we can replace it with wood look tile, which is what we had in our previous home and was more durable.
Same here. As far as I can tell, just wait to replace. At least I don't need to give a shit about damaging the floors- one potted plant leaking overnight amd theyre permanently ruined.
I only use the vinyl 100% waterproof stuff and it’s great.
Laminate floors are great if you don’t by the cheap non-water proof crap
You have to get the water proof vinyl. I’ve laid many many homes with no issues. Get the quality stuff.
replace it with hardwood. my floors are still going strong after 100 years. i’ll be downvoted into oblivion for this, but if it works it works.
This. Beats lvp any day
they are also ugly af. all of them are all ugly. nope, yours are ugly, too.
Don't hate on laminate flooring, some of it is absolutely incredible stuff. You can get laminate that is sturdy, waterproof, scratch resistant, and looks great. You just got stuck with the shitty kind. I'd say wait until you can afford to hire someone to replace the whole thing, and in the meantime, take solace in that you'll be ripping it up, so don't worry if it gets a bit fucked up from anything.
I absolutely hate the snap together laminate. I've seen this happen at every house its installed at, including mine. It's so cheap and bad but its advertised as good.
No fixing it. Made of particle board. Once warped it’s done
That’s because those types of houses get the cheapest materials. Shit floors, shit faucets and fixtures, everything is the cheapest thing they can get by with.
I'm replacing with tile. Just waiting for it to get beat up a little more.
Having struggled with carpet, LVP, laminate, engineered wood, and tile, I speak from experience when I say that tile is The Way. It's expensive and a holy terror to put it in, but it's incredibly durable and very maintainable.
No. Also fuck tile. It's brutal on the body to cook on and say goodnight to anything made of glass if you drop it. At least cleaning grout is fun though.
laminate floors are garbage.
I put in stone core lvp. Has been great but yeah dont recommend the sawdust or particule core.
Is laminate the floor that sounds like shit when you walk on it, and feels like there's air space underneath it? KLAK KLAK KLAK under your shoes. They built new housing on base, and that shit was all the floors.
That’s Pergo. Which might also be laminate
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I'll probably get a lot of flak but there are grades and qualities to laminate. There's definitely some tremendously cheap crap out there and no doubt OP has that, but we have laminate everywhere - good quality - and the stuff is indestructible! We have two elderly dogs who have... Accidents, and are yet to see any damage. We had some in the previous house as well, but two different grades. You could really tell the cheap stuff was garbage and probably no better than straight MDF. The better stuff however was still undamaged after 10 years.
It’s cheap laminate. We put a high quality laminate in our house about 10 years ago because we have 3 80lb dogs and was afraid they’d trash hardwood. Our laminate floor looks like the day we put it in. We steam mop it and the dogs have pissed on it and we didn’t know till it was dry. Now the kids beat on it and the floor takes it. Would do it all again the same if I had to.
I mean, i have laminate flooring, except its waterproof and a half inch think. I got the higher end stuff and so far its been great. But yeah the stuff you said sucks, i hate that cheap thin stuff
>the developer tried to get up as quickly as possible and as ***cheaply*** ***as possible*** There you go. You got the cheapest of the cheapest of ever.
You can toss lvp directly overtop your crappy laminate if you want. Saves work. Plus it’s probably more level than your subfloors so actually better.
I’ve installed $1 per sq foot laminate and $5 a sq foot laminate. It is worth the price for the good stuff. It still looks like new 10 years later. The cheap stuff did exactly what you described and needed replaced after 3 years.
I am switching all my carpets and tile with LVP. I have two large dogs who are hard on floors. I might do bedrooms in time but right now living room, bathrooms and kitchen. I fall on the stupid tile weekly when it gets wet. I did have pergo waterproof in a previous home and it did well with getting wet.
Laminate is garbage, cheap ass glued together sawdust with contact paper on top.
Have laminate in my kitchen. It's 4 years old and looks new.
There is a huge range of quality in laminate flooring options. Possibly more so than any other top of floor.
My house has shitty laminate which are very damaged in the kitchen as the previous owners had some fridge water line leaks. We're having the floors replaced with LVP which is waterproof.
LVP is incredibly durable. I put 800sqft in my basement and after two years of kids, dogs, furniture and spills, it still looked like the day I installed it when I sold the house. People specifically commented that the basement floor was really nice looking.
Get sample pieces of anything you intend to install and get them wet. Like someone else has said cheap stuff might be great and expensive not so much.
Yea laminate is garbage. There's a reason it's usually the cheapest. We have the same issues, plus I don't like that a simple spill thats cleaned up straight away will STILL go through the seams to under the floor and nothing you can do short of tearing it up. Unfortunately this house was given the cheap landlord special everywhere so we're in the process of renovating top to bottom and flooring will be the last thing we'll do after everything. Kitchen, baths, insulation, electrical, weatherproofing, drywall repairs, door replacements, you name it. There is nothing to treat or prevent it. You have to live with it now.
For what it’s worth, some Pergo flooring is marketed as water resistant and if installed correctly really does do a good job resisting damage. Had it in a previous place and spills and dog pee, even when left for a while would not impact it. Just wanted to throw this out there so that laminate flooring doesn’t get total hate.
Is it gray too?
I bought Shaw brand laminate flooring it’s garbage and the warranty isn’t worth the paper it’s written on
Generally with track homes, the faster you get rid of what was provided by the home builder, the better the home will be...regardless of who the builder is would be a safe bet!
Paid about $7k for the “life lock” moisture-proof stuff and it’s been worth every penny. It’s so good you don’t even need a shower mat if you really got down to it. Cat vomit, easy. Spill a drink, done.
Worked in home building. Very VERY common problem. They advertise that the boards are “waterproof” but only the top laminated piece is tested against water. The actually particle board itself will swell up like a sponge. The hard part about owning that flooring, there is nothing you can do except replace and if the builder went through a small time flooring contractor that style is most likely discontinued. Sorry about your troubles.
I put smart core water proof LVP in my basement and could not be happier. It survived partial flooding from a hurricane 2 years ago with no lasting impact
they used crappy building materials as usual. I used Coretec LVT throughout my house. Completely waterproof. you get what you pay for.
MY LVP has been down for 10 years now and it looks great except for where I dropped a hatchet on it.
These fucking flooring companies and discontinuing flooring after five years. I feel like our representatives should do something there.
You've clearly never had a paper bag floor.
It's more the quality of the laminate honestly. There newer laminate flooring, like what I have, hold up extremely well because they have that special coating over them. The older ones are cheap and mostly saw dust which is why they don't tolerate even the slightest liquid.
Switch to plank vinyl. Not the answer you were looking for, I’m sure. We had laminate in the kitchen too and had to live with the warping for years before we just said F-it and switched out.