I have a rental property that is carpeted. I’m thinking about re-doing the floors on the ground level. The current tenant asked about getting vinyl “wood look” floors and has someone who would do the install for little or nothing if I buy the material. I’m not in any rush to put money into the property but have been thinking about the floors. Is the vinyl flooring any good these days? It always had a cheap look to me but I haven’t done any shopping to see what’s currently available. Carpets can get abused by tenants but its easy to replace. I might go with laminate flooring if I do anything. The floor is concrete so tile or vinyl would seem to make for cold floors in the winter but hey, I don’t live there anymore and probably never will. Pets aren’t allowed so that that’s not a consideration.
I put vinyl “wood look” flooring from Home Depot in my basement on a concrete floor with no sublayer about ten years ago. I use the basement as a guest room and many people have stayed there, taken showers down there and hung out all day there in socks or bare feet, no one has complained of cold floors or the floor being too hard.
If put down properly it looks pretty good. To me properly was making sure that each row was offset from the proceeding row so that the seams didn’t line up.
We’ve put in “luxury vinyl plank” in a couple of places in our home. (IIRC, there have been lengthy threads in the past.). We are very pleased with the book and durability. The rest of our floors are hardwood. No experience w/ laminate.
I would spring for LVP for a rental. It should take a lot of abuse, water damage or any other thing better than carpet or laminate. Cheaper laminates have not worn well for us and the risk of water damage and buckling is not good.
Stone Polymer Core (SPC), Is what I’m looking at for my house. It supposedly has the same resistance to water damage but it’s thicker more ridged and a slightly better look. I’m just waiting to talk to a few people who have it before I make the plunge. I don’t think the cost/benefit for a rental would be wise but I don’t know your situation.
There are a lot of quality vinyl products out there these days. You can get vinyl in a variety of appearance and installation types. There’s sheet vinyl available in a wood plank pattern, or you can get the vinyl planks others in this thread have described. If wood isn’t attractive to you, there are similar products emulating a stone tile appearance, as well.
All flooring types, except perhaps bare concrete, are susceptible to water damage given enough time. I think vinyl wins out in terms of incidental spills like dropping a cup of water, but an outright water loss like a broken pipe is gonna cause some damage no matter what.
I worked 13 years in water damage mitigation and I think once we saved a vinyl floor that was a high-quality pressure-sensitive product. We were able to gently roll it up to expose the wet (non-salvageable) underlayment and subfloor. Once the subfloor was dried and the underlayment replaced, the vinyl could be re-installed. I don’t recall ever saving a laminate floor.
One thing to watch out for with laminate is that it may be more acoustically reflective than other types of flooring, although that may depend on the precise type of laminate and how it’s been installed (with or without an underlayment, floating on a subfloor vs nailed or glued). This would be especially noticeable if it’s replacing carpet. It’s true for any hard surface but real wood appears to be more forgiving than laminate. The risk is that you may end up with an acoustically “live” room with noticeable echoes, for which the only fix is things like heavy curtains, area rugs, and stuffed furniture.
I have 100% waterproof loose-lay vinyl (?) plank flooring in a large room in my basement directly on the concrete floor. I put it in around 2013. At one point I realized water had leaked in and much of the flooring had mold under it. I was able to remove all of them, soak them in the bathtub, scrub them clean, and put them back. They still look great.
For rental property, I would opt for vinyl because it should be less expensive and perhaps more durable from the effects of water damage, pet stains, etc. Also, if you save some vinyl remnants after installation, repairing small gouges or other damage may be an economical method of repair.