LVP vs laminate flooring: the honest comparison

What each one actually is

LVP stands for luxury vinyl plank. The plank is built in layers: a printed photographic film of wood grain, a clear plastic wear layer on top measured in mils, and underneath it a rigid core. On the floors we stock that core is SPC — stone plastic composite, essentially PVC mixed with limestone powder. It contains no wood.

Laminate looks similar and installs similarly, but the core is different in the one way that matters: it is HDF, a high-density fibreboard made of compressed wood. On top sits a printed layer and a melamine wear surface, which is genuinely hard — harder than vinyl.

So the honest summary is not "one is better". It is that laminate has a harder face and a core made of wood, and LVP has a softer face and a core that is not.

Water: the difference that decides most purchases

A rigid-core LVP plank can sit in standing water and come back. The core has nothing in it to absorb — you can leave a plank in a bucket overnight and it will be the same plank in the morning.

Laminate's HDF core is compressed wood fibre. When water reaches it through a seam or an edge, the fibre swells, and swelling is permanent. The plank lifts at the joint and the edge roughens into what the trade calls chipping or peaking. No amount of drying reverses it; the board has to be replaced.

"Water-resistant" laminate exists and is genuinely better than older products — the seams are sealed and the surface repels a spill for a while. Read the warranty, though. Most cover surface water for a stated number of hours, not standing water, and not water arriving from underneath. A dishwasher that fails while you are at work is not a spill.

This is the whole argument in a kitchen, a bathroom, a laundry, a ground-floor slab, or any house where a hurricane can put water on the floor.

Price: what each really costs

Entry-level laminate is usually the cheaper box on the shelf. Compare like for like, though, and the gap closes fast — a 12mm laminate with a good AC rating is not cheaper than a mid-weight SPC plank.

The other cost is the one nobody quotes: replacement. A laminate floor that takes water in year three is a second floor purchase. That risk is worth real money in Florida, and it is the reason we do not stock laminate at all.

Durability: scratches, dents and wear layers

Here laminate genuinely wins on one axis and loses on another, and most articles only tell you about the one that suits them.

Scratches — advantage laminate

Melamine is harder than vinyl. A good AC4 or AC5 laminate resists surface scratching better than most vinyl at the same price. If you drag furniture and never spill anything, laminate holds a surface longer.

Dents — advantage LVP

Laminate's hardness makes it brittle. Drop something heavy on a corner and it chips, and a chip in laminate is visible because the core underneath is a different colour to the print. Vinyl is softer, so it dents rather than chips, and a dent in a wood-look vinyl is far less obvious than a pale chip.

What the wear layer number means

On LVP, ignore the total thickness for durability and read the wear layer in mils. It is the clear layer protecting the print, and it is the number that decides how long the floor looks new:

• 6–12 mil — builder grade, bedrooms and light traffic only
• 20 mil — a busy family home with pets; our standard
• 22 mil — rated for commercial traffic, which at home means it simply stops being the thing you worry about

Every floor we stock is 12, 20 or 22 mil, and the number is listed on each floor's page.

How they feel and sound

Laminate is louder. The HDF core is hard and hollow-sounding underfoot, which is why the click of heels on laminate is a recognisable noise and why it needs a separate underlayment to be tolerable upstairs.

Rigid-core LVP with an attached IXPE pad is noticeably quieter and slightly warmer to bare feet. Every floor we stock has that pad already bonded to the plank, so there is no separate underlayment to buy or get wrong.

On texture, honestly, good products in both categories now feel convincing. Embossed-in-register texturing — where the grain you feel lines up with the grain you see — exists in both, and it matters more to the impression than the material does.

When laminate is genuinely the better buy

We sell LVP, so treat this section with appropriate suspicion — but there are real cases where we would tell you to buy laminate:

• Upstairs bedrooms with no water risk and a tight budget. Water never reaches them, and laminate's harder surface is real value at the low end.
• You want maximum scratch resistance per dollar and you are disciplined about spills. AC5 laminate is hard to beat on that one metric.
• You want the most convincing wood underfoot at a low price. Some high-end laminates still edge out equivalently priced vinyl on realism.
• You are renting and the landlord specified it. Not a technical reason, but it comes up.

What would change our answer: any water risk at all, a slab on grade, pets, or a Florida ground floor. In those cases the swelling problem is not theoretical — it is the most common reason we get calls from people replacing a floor that is four years old.

Side by side

Choosing for a Florida house

Two things about this state change the calculation. Humidity sits high year-round, so any wood-based core is under constant low-level stress and moves with the seasons. And water events here are not rare — a tropical storm, a failed AC drain pan, a pool door left open in a downpour.

A rigid SPC core is dimensionally stable across that humidity range and indifferent to the water events. That is the entire reason this business only stocks it.

The practical Florida checklist: 20mil wear layer or better on any ground floor, an attached pad if you are going over a slab, and an expansion gap left at every wall — rigid core barely moves, but "barely" is not "never", and a floor pinned under a door jamb will still buckle.

Common questions