LVP Flooring vs Laminate Flooring | What's the Difference?

hello I'm Brian with Boulevard home Flooring and Design I'm here today to talk to you about laminate and luxury vinyl plank also known as lvp one of the things I haven't done much in the last five years is I haven't sold much laminate but that's all changed we're going to talk about that today so in the last five years if you purchased a laminate you then had to purchase a pad to go underneath that laminate to give it the support to quiet the floor down a little bit once you did that then the cost became more expensive than luxury vinyl plank or lvp lvp comes with a pad attached so that kind of made a price difference and not a lot of people were interested in that what we're seeing now in laminate is not anything like your grandmother's laminate laminate has been totally redesigned in my opinion what's changed is the core and now some of them come with a pad attached what that does for us is it brings the price down enough to where it's very competitive additive with the really inexpensive luxury vinyl plank and it creates a more competitive environment where you've got two products One waterproof one water resistant both have pad attached and their price points are relatively close enough to each other that it's not going to make that big of a deal when you're trying to make a decision as to what product you want to put down in your home they've infused resin in with that high density core and that has made it more water resistant so there's a lot of talk about waterproof water resistant one of the things that's driven our Market a lot here is waterproof so when it comes to luxury vinyl plank it's definitely waterproof here's a jar of luxury vinyl plank WPC that's been in this jar of water since May of 2014. yeah that long we've had to change out the water a couple of times but other than that it's been sitting in the water all that time luxury vinyl plank it doesn't delaminate it doesn't fall apart it's 100 waterproof in fact there's been stories where people have had a flood in their home they've taken all of that floor out gently saved as many planks as they could dried everything out reinstalled that product and voila their floor is back and didn't really cost them that much except for labor the reality is is if there's a flood in your home they're probably going to rip it all out and you're going to put something new down anyways but that's one of the real reasons why a lot of people choose luxury vinyl plank lemon has been around a long time and you heard me say earlier this ain't your grandma's laminate and that's true one of the reasons why I say that is the older style of laminates with the non-water resistant cores over time in the Locking System where water would seep in and dry out and then seep in and dry out what happens is is the product would swell and then the swelling wouldn't go down your floor is ruined and you got to replace the whole thing so that's kind of a negative connotation about laminate now in the last nine months things have really changed as I mentioned with the high density cores fused with the resin now that they're water resistant up to 72 hours some even 100 hours you don't have to worry about that laminate swelling so one of the things I talk about with customers is those things that cause your floor to get ruined one of those things that most of us don't think about and that is you go to your ice box you get ice out of the refrigerator door and some of the ice cubes fall on the floor some of us pick them up put them in the sink some of us just let them sit there and melt if you're a pet owner and you love your pets and you're noticing that your dog when they drink they lap water all over the place that's really bad on a floor because every time it does that that water seeps into the Locking System and that's what would cause a laminate floor previously to swell up over time is that constant exposure to moisture now with the luxury vinyl planks and with the laminates they are protected all the way around with water resistant products that helps protect the Locking systems so you don't have to worry about that anymore okay so let's talk for a minute about the top of the products luxury vinyl planks and laminates they both have a picture that looks like wood or looks like tile but both of those pictures are produced on two different types of product for instance a luxury vinyl plank as you see here this is a vinyl product or a vinyl pitcher it has no texture this is a laminate and this picture is printed out on paper and again has no texture the difference between the two of these in Finnish is one has a wear layer it's a clear coat added on and texture included into that clear coat that's what gives you that 2D look when you're on top of the floor looking down it looks more like wood laminate does the same thing instead of a wear layer that's 6 8 12 or 20 mil wear layer the laminate has a totally different finish on top of it and a different different way of rating that it's called AC abrasion criteria and they come in a ac1 ac2 AC3 AC4 and an ac5 and somebody's introducing an ac6 let's just talk about what those numbers mean after the AC in Industry testing they've taken a set of Caster wheels like on the bottom of an office chair and they've spun that around 1 000 times on top of the laminate finish and the product withstood all of that wear and tear until it passed 1 000 Revolutions of those Caster chairs over top of the product so an AC4 which is what most of our products are that's 4 000 Revolutions of an office chair over top of that product so it's a lot more resistant to scratching you would say none of these products are scratch proof so let's just get that out of the way they are scratch resistant so recently in the boulevard home Flooring and Design Center we had a little bit of remodeling that happened here we put in a new sales desk and around that new sales desk we put down laminate and luxury vinyl plank and we did this in order to show customers what the different trims look like and also to show in high traffic areas that you don't have to be afraid of these products one of those products that we recently put down is called Smith Cliff from MSI I've got four different colors down here on the floor it's in a super high traffic area and it's held up super well and we're super happy with it it's called a laminate hybrid and the reason why it's called laminate hybrid it still has that paper pitcher still has that AC4 rating but the core is actually a plastic core kind of like an outdoor Trex product so it's waterproof and it handles high traffic really well so as sales people here at Boulevard home our job is to try to think through all the different processes that you might face when you're doing a remodel at your house and how those floors are going to interact with each other and one of those issue issues that I want to mention today and talk about is the overall thickness of a laminate versus lvp both of them as you can see in the picture here have a different thickness and in turn is going to have a different height level that different height level is going to affect a few different things in your home for instance going up against tile laminate is going to be thicker and be a lot closer to the same height as the tile versus the lvp lvp has similar products that are thicker now and those are some of the products that I'm recommending the most now I have in my hand here three different samples this first one here you can see how thick that is it's about two millimeters that is a glue down lvp glue down is an excellent product it's used in most commercial locations you see around your hometown when you go in you see a wood looking floor it's probably a glue down luxury vinyl plank then there's a five mil thickness and its durability is just as good because the finish on top is the same but what's different is the Locking System and how thick that is lots of of luxury vinyl planks now are coming out with an eight mil overall thickness and that is a thicker Locking System and that Locking System where being thicker is going to hold better and resist separating over time and so that's one of the recommendations that I'm doing nowadays is recommending that customers consider a thicker luxury vinyl plank does cost a little bit more but in the end it's going to wear a lot better and stay together longer that Locking System is used to help hold each plank tight with one another and it's a weak point on a thinner luxury vinyl plank so the thicker ones give you a stronger Locking System for the Long Haul they are two different products no doubt about it laminate is never going to be luxury vinyl plank and the luxury vinyl planks never going to be laminate they just have different applications in your home so I hope in today's discussion you feel a little more confident about the two different products laminate and luxury vinyl plank thanks for watching this Boulevard home flow video if you have any comments please leave them below also like subscribe it helps us in our algorithm we love you and we want you to be a part of Boulevard home foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: BlvdHome Flooring

Views: 139,063

Keywords: vinyl flooring, luxury vinyl plank, laminate flooring, LVP Flooring vs Laminate Flooring | What's the Difference?, Best hard surface flooring, LVP flooring, is luxury vinyl plank waterproof?, waterproof flooring, water resistant flooring, best flooring for home, vinyl vs laminate flooring, Best hard surface flooring options, difference between laminate flooring and vinyl flooring, Abbrasion Criteria, Wear layer, 20 mil wear layer, fake wood flooring, wood looking floor

Id: eugG2TuReg0

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023