High-end vinyl flooring, often called “luxury” vinyl flooring (often abbreviated as LVP), can be nearly indistinguishable from real wood planks. Higher-end laminate can be embossed with ridges and grooves to make it look like hardwood.
Laminate flooring is also a lot more sustainable than vinyl.
Super high-end vinyl is probably going to look a lot better than cheap laminate. Both materials come in basically any color, texture, style, and grain you could possibly imagine, so don’t get married to one material over the other due to the visual appearance of a specific product.
Both vinyl and laminate can be manufactured with an embossing to make them mimic real hardwood.
On the low end, laminate can run 80 to 90 cents per 1 sq ft (0. 093 m2), but the higher quality stuff can be up to $3 per1 sq ft (0. 093 m2).
Regular vinyl can run $1-3 per 1 sq ft (0. 093 m2). Higher-end vinyl (aka luxury vinyl planks or LVP) can cost up $5 per 1 sq ft (0. 093 m2).
With that said, both vinyl and laminate will stain if you don’t wipe up spills.
Laminate planks can last anywhere from 10 to 25 years depending on how much foot traffic the floor gets.
Vinyl flooring will typically last around 20 years.
There are adhesive rolls of cheap vinyl and laminate out there which are installed a little differently, but they’re really out of the question unless you’re on a shoestring budget and you don’t care about the appearance at all.
You can install vinyl in living rooms, kitchens, basements, bathrooms, hallways, or bedrooms.
Luxury vinyl planks (LVP) are also comparable to hardwood, but they’re a lot more expensive than laminate. Laminate can’t be installed anywhere where it’ll get wet. This means it can’t be installed in kitchens, basements with moisture issues, or bathrooms.
