When you want to choose a flooring for your home, two choices that you probably will choose: waterproof laminate flooring and vinyl flooring.
Waterproof laminate flooring is mostly made of advanced technology of waterproof wood fiberboard and interlocking system. Vinyl flooring comes in either sheets or in vinyl plank flooring with interlocking system that is similar to the laminate flooring.
To make a really good decision, you will want to compare them to see where each of them works the best. Once you’ve compared them, you will know which one is better and suitable for your home.
Top 3 Differences between Waterproof Vinyl Flooring and Laminate Flooring
When comparing waterproof laminate flooring to vinyl flooring, there are several categories to look at: water and heat resistance, durability and maintenance, and cost comparison.
Let’s go through them one by one.
1. Water and Heat Resistance
Regular Laminate flooring’s core is high density fiberboard. When it gets wet it tends to expand and swell. If that happens, you can try to dry it out, but it never goes back to the original shape.
Waterproof laminate flooring’s core is high technology waterproof HDF, which can prevent water from entering inside, and there is waterproof coating on the 4-sides click parts each plank, the coating is also advanced technology coating, not regular wax. This kind waterproof laminate flooring will have no expanding or swelling in water for 500 hours.
Vinyl plank flooring does not have this issue and doesn’t expand if it gets wet.
They are both good at heat resistance and are suitable for floor heating system.
2. Durability and Maintenance
Both laminate flooring and vinyl flooring are good on durability, but they have their limits.
Both regular laminate flooring and waterproof laminate flooring are good at scratch resistance and wear resistance. One most important advantage of laminate flooring is wear resistance. When the over layer quality is better, wear resistance is very high, such as AC4, AC5, AC6, which is suitable for commercial usage.
Vinyl flooring’s material is more soft, which is also good at wear resistance when the overlay quality is good. However, scratch resistance is not good. It is easy to damage the surfaces hard and sharp objects.
Both waterproof laminate flooring and vinyl flooring are easy to maintain, mops to clean the surfaces regularly.
3. Waterproof Laminate flooring VS Vinyl Flooring Cost Comparison
We can not simply say which cost is expensive and cheaper as they have different thickness, different overlay, different quality raw materials. When we compare these 2 kinds flooring’s cost, vinyl flooring should be vinyl plank with interlocking system, not sheet vinyl or 1.5mm to 3mm thickness planks as they are thin and low-end flooring.
Waterproof laminate flooring thickness is 8mm and 12mm excluding pad; interlock Vinyl flooring thickness is from 3.2mm to 5mm excluding pad.
Generally speaking 8mm waterproof laminate flooring and 4mm vinyl flooring costs are similar, and 12mm waterproof laminate flooring and 5mm vinyl flooring costs are similar.
Comparison Results
Both waterproof vinyl flooring and laminate flooring have their own unique benefits and drawbacks.
Waterproof laminate flooring and vinyl plank flooring can be installed for all areas with the greatest risk of exposure to water, bathrooms, laundry rooms, etc as they are good at water resistance.
