The Best Wood Flooring for Your Home | Vinyl Plank vs Laminate vs Engineered Hardwood vs Solid Wood

are you looking for the perfect flooring for your home or for your own investment property stay tuned as i go over all the details around hardwood engineered hardwood uh luxury vinyl plank laminate i go through the pros and cons of each of them and i also give you my own recommendations on who i think each of these flooring types is the best fit for so stay tuned let's get into it so just a couple of quick disclaimers for you guys right off the bat which is that there are different ways of installing each of these different types some of them are glued down some of them are floating some of them click together some of them are diy friendly some of them aren't they also come in different price points so some of them are going to be a lot more expensive depending on maybe the rarity of the wood um or depending on the type of brand that you're choosing so that's not really the purpose of what i'm trying to get across in this video i'm just trying to give you some general guidelines quick overview of all the different types explain what they are the general advantages and disadvantages and of course you know i'm gonna give you my two cents and i'm gonna do that here too so that's the purpose of this video let's get started okay so the first time i want to talk about is solid hardwood so it looks like this as you can see it is just a piece of wood that is then nailed down right into your uh flooring okay so what are the different advantages of hardwood well first of all i think there's just a warmth that comes from real natural wood and you know if you've been into if you've owned real hardwood before you know what i'm talking about um it just really feels like it's kind of got that just that warm energy and you just know that it's natural wood um you know as the person who installed it and that means something to you so if that matters to you then you know any of these manufactured products i'm going to be talking about later on they're not really going to replicate the exact experience as having real hardwood in your home it also can be sanded down which is nice so you can actually sand down the surface um several times so that does give you a lot of advantages over the long term so it's really classic and it's going to last you for decades another really great advantage of real hardwood is resale value so people tend to really prize real hardwood and it does elevate the space so if you are looking to sell it in a few years you'll probably get top dollar for your hardwood it's not going to be a knock against it because people will assume that they're not going to have to replace it they're going to assume it's going to be around for decades and if they fall in love with it they're going to pay for it so that's something to keep in mind too some of the disadvantages of hardwood first of all it's very expensive uh because this is real wood and it's not a manufactured product it is going to be a little bit on the pricier side not a little bit it's actually quite a little bit on the pricier side it is kind of quite expensive a couple other disadvantages it does dent and ding and scratch very lazy because this is solid on wood and wood is a fairly soft material so um you know if you drop something on it you know if you drop a knife or in the kitchen or something like that you know it is going to chip it is going to scratch it again you can buff those out but that's just something to be mindful of you're not going to buff it out you know every year it will ding and scratch with different you know moving furniture or with pets or with kids or whatever and of course tied into that in terms of the durability is that it is also subject to water damage so if you have a leaking dishwasher or your washer breaks or something like that um that's something to be mindful of because it is real wood another disadvantage to hardwood is that it's not ideal for really kind of humid environments so think like florida right like if you live in florida probably this is not going to work for you and that's because it starts to have a little um it starts to cop they call it cupping and basically all the cupping is is that as the wood tends to expand and contract depending on uh the season and the humidity level and whatever so it's not really recommended for really humid environments and also kind of tied into that point is that it really only comes in these sort of planks uh the trend has definitely moved towards larger planks especially in open concepts which are a lot more popular now as well as like really large rooms the trend is moving towards having really wide planks so getting into the six seven eight inches and because of the cupping and uh all the stuff i just mentioned um these don't actually really come in those sizes which if that's a deal breaker for you sorry you just can't really get eight inch eight inch wide planks in a real hardwood product so they usually just come in uh these sort of smaller planks so if you're looking for something bigger you're out of luck with hardwood okay moving on let's talk about engineered hardwood so engineered hardwood first of all the advantage that i mentioned in hardwood still applies here it's real wood what it is basically is you've got kind of this plywood material underneath but then you've got you can if you can see we've got this layer here of real wood so this is a real wood product you're able to see that you kind of get the advantages of having that warm wood uh feel in your space you're going to get all those different knots that texture uh you're going to get that in engineered hardware that you're not going to get in a manufactured product also you can sand it down a lot of people say that you can't you you can uh just be mindful i mean this has a lot of texture here so i'm not sure if you sand it you're gonna be able to keep that texture you can usually just sand down you know a couple of times uh because you do have that veneer that sits on top uh so you are able to do that the other advantage with engineered hardwood is that it's perfectly fine for human environments it also comes in a variety of sizes so this one here this is a seven inch plank so this is a seven inch wide plank um so if you're looking for that in a hardwood product but you can't get it then engineered hardwood is definitely the way to go so like the case with hardwood engineered hardwood is also really great for resale um people tend to really love hardwood they tend to think okay this is probably a really quality product they're not gonna rip it up so they tend to sort of pay a higher premium because they know that it's a really great product that they're going to be happy with for years okay a couple of disadvantages to engineered hardwood two really big ones come to mind first of all um it is quite expensive so it sometimes can be it's not as expensive probably as real hardwood again it sort of depends on the variety and whatever uh but generally it is still a very expensive product and the other one is durability so because it's got that real wood layer on top it has some of the disadvantages that we talked about in hardwood just be mindful that you know you will get little dings and scratches along the way um so maybe not an ideal if you're really fussy and you want it to look absolutely perfect forever uh probably engineered hardwood might not make sense for you in that case okay the next step here is luxury vinyl plank that seems to be the name that they're rolling around these days this thing is just getting more and more popular i mean the luxury plank part i feel like is just like a marketing gimmick to be honest to me but it's vinyl and i feel like people think vinyl and they think cheap and they call it luxury vinyl plank to sort of jazz it up a little bit um but anyway it's luxury vinyl plank that's we're gonna call it um okay so basically what it is it's just this manufactured material on the bottom here it's got a protective layer and it's got a layer of vinyl um advantages here so what are we talking um advantage is that it's generally going to be more affordable uh than the engineered hardwood or the hardwood options so this is probably it's still not like the cheapest option which we'll get to um but it's still a much more affordable option also durability this is scratch resistant it is also waterproof again you want to check with a specific brand that you're getting but that could be a huge advantage for you is if you maybe have small children or if you have lots of pets or whatever and you think there's going to be maybe little accidents in the house or there's going to be a lot of furniture a lot of action a lot of movement in the space and um that really matters to you then i would say durability luxury vinyl plank is a more durable product than the wood options that we just talked about another advantage is that although this is a print this this on top here is a print um these things are getting really good you guys like sometimes when you can find this in a space and you walk in you know you can be fooled you can look at it and think like oh is this real hardwood and then it takes you a minute or sometimes you'll never even figure out that this is actually luxury vinyl plank so the quality here is really good these prints are getting really good they're getting more and more wood like which is a huge advantage i think okay so now let's get to the cons of luxury vinyl plank i would say the first one is that it's not a real wood product and for some people that will really bother them some people just really want to know that they have real wood in their space and that's why they're going to go with engineered hardwood and if that's going to bug you then i'm sorry but this will never actually be real but you can it can look like it they can get better at better at printing it but it is going to be different so arguably it kind of lacks the warmth that's going to come from a real wood product also something that i have noticed as you can see here like this particular one here i don't know if you can see it's kind of like faking that there's a knot um if you run your finger over it like i can tell that there's nothing there like this is clearly just a print um so again if you're looking for all those different you know knots and character and you know when you're bare feet and you're just kind of walking around your house you want to be able to feel the knots and feel all the different texture that comes with wood so depending on the type they are embossing these to give them kind of a little bit more texture so that kind of really depends on the variety that you pick up but to me you're never going to see a replication of this exact kind of texture that you're going to get in a real wood product so the print is there but the texture is kind of not another disadvantage is that it's usually not as great for resale so usually if you're gonna go sell your house in a few years uh people will not kind of pay a premium because they are going to see this as a more affordable product and so um they're not gonna necessarily pay the premium that they would get if you were to say look at engineered hardwood or in real hardwood and another potential disadvantage is going to be off-gassing so i'm going to talk about this one as well in a minute but off-gassing just basically means that there is concern that manufactured products like this can emit gases after they've been installed which are arguably maybe not healthy uh for you and your family um i'm not going to kind of weigh in on this because this is honestly really up to you there are some people in my life that just would never put this in their home that they would really just look for an engineered hardwood or hardwood product because they know wood has been around for the beginning of time and they know that it's it's a safe product um and so there could be some safety concerns around a product like this but i'm also not gonna weigh in and say that you know this is not good for you that's kind of really up to you i think like you can sort of weigh in on whether or not that's something that you're comfortable with okay so finally you guys we have laminate so laminate is basically you got this manufactured kind of wood product in here and then you have a print on top the big difference here is that uh the big advantage i would say over say comparing it something like luxury vinyl plank is that it's usually a lot cheaper so i know for a lot of you out there i'm not going to be so snobby to assume that everybody should put in solid hardwood in their place for some people it's a stretch to even get into laminate and i totally understand that so if that's you this is a really great option because these again the prints are getting better they're becoming higher quality they're really able to this even does have some texture to it i mean it's not the same as wood i'm not gonna lie but it's getting a lot better the biggest disadvantage to laminate i'm gonna compare it to vinyl the biggest disadvantage here is that it is not waterproof um so a lot of the disadvantages of vinyl still apply in terms of resale and whatever but the biggest one i want to focus on is waterproofing because if you have something i'll give you an example my friends used to rent an apartment and the landlord had put in laminate and the place was gorgeous like they had put in a lot of money into this renovation into this rental but they put in laminate probably because it was the cheapest option uh thought they could save some money well of course the washing machine ended up leaking one day and they ended up having to tear out a lot of the laminate in order to put it all back in um so you save money in the short term but just be really careful because you are taking on a little bit of risk that there could be a leakage of a bathtub or a dishwasher or a sink or whatever and that's going to ruin your laminate because this is not waterproof so that's just something to really be mindful of okay so now my own two cents like who would i recommend this for because i think each product is really great at something and really perfect for a specific type of customer so let's start with real hardwood so real hardwood people like you know who you are like if you're a real hardwood person it's because you want that very traditional look you want something that's gonna last you for decades you're looking for a really timeless kind of design and you just really want like just real wood and you know any of the newfangled manufacturer products or even engineered hardwood is a bridge too far you just want that real wood experience you want it uh that really done that traditional way and that's something that really matters to you so engineered hardwood i would say it's really awesome for people that are living in the space that they're going to be renovating so this is probably not the first choice i would personally put in for something like a rental i think if you're going to enjoy it because you value the warmth and the sort of varying textures that come from engineered wood and you're really looking to put in a real wood product in your home um if you're going to be living there and you're concerned about off-gassing uh engineered hardwood is a really great option also if you're living in humid environments or in places where you just don't want to take the risk with real hardwood engineer hardware is a really great place for you okay luxury vinyl plank i think luxury vinyl plank is really great for people that are doing a rental you want to own the place for a long time you don't want to keep changing out the flooring every few years you want to treat it as an investment but you want it to be something that's going to last for a long time so you're looking for a really durable product luxury vinyl plank is great i think if you have small kids i think if you have lots of maybe if you have pets um it is of the manufactured products it's the pricier of the two but i do think you get a lot out of that durability so i think if that kind of fits your deal uh the luxury vinyl pike is great and then finally we have laminate and i think laminate is really great for people that want the look of wood and they don't actually really care about it being actual wood but they just want that look and feel and they're really looking for that cost effective option they're really looking for that lower price point just be really careful about water damage you are taking a little bit of a risk there but assuming you're okay with that because you know you really want to save that money up front that makes a lot of sense so thanks for watching you guys i actually just created a renovation playlist that i'm going to link right here and you can check that out and it's got details around like counter tops and quartz and granite and all the rest of it i've added some details there so if you're doing a full renovation i highly advise you check out that playlist and i've got more content there i'll see y'all in the next video thanks bye

Channel: Nick Lewis

Views: 122,867

Rating: 4.9504132 out of 5

Keywords: the best wood flooring for your home, engineered hardwood vs solid hardwood, laminate vs vinyl flooring, best hard flooring types for your home, pros and cons of engineered hardwood, pros and cons of luxury vinyl plank, how to choose the right floors, what wood flooring is best, wood flooring buyers guide, wood flooring 101, engineered hardwood vs luxury vinyl plank, pros and cons of laminate, pros and cons of solid hardwood, best waterproof wood flooring

Id: OJlPOiZ3VN0

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020