Why you'll want vinyl plank flooring in your home

While we'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't love hardwood, it can be difficult, or even impossible, for some homeowners to install it. Enter luxury vinyl plank flooring (LVP), which is so realistic that even some flooring experts can't tell it from real wood. We see it in every room in the house and in some high-end homes where once only the real thing would do. It's also 100% waterproof, durable, easy to care for, and has an uncomplicated installation technique.

LVP is one of the design options for luxury vinyl flooring (LVF). The vinyl is cut into strips, then mounted on boards to simulate the look of hardwood planks. Like all LVF, the images are taken with 3D photography and printed digitally. You'll see knots, grains, and swirls.

Embossing adds depth, dimension, and textured features, such as wire-brushed, hand scraped, weathered, and distressed. All LVF follows current industry trends so that you can get gray or whitewashed floors or weathered barn door wood looks, among others. As for trends, textures are big in 2020, and these floors are also finished with matte, gloss, or high gloss colors. Add high gloss to your wood look floor, and it will look as though it came out of the design pages.

LVP is usually associated with hardwood, but some use it to mimic stone looks. Many feel the large format with fewer seams gives in the more continuous surface of a quarried slab. Others prefer it cut into square tile-sized pieces because the extra seams give it more realism. Some take it even further and use grout, which now comes in a broad color palette and is an important design tool.