When you are choosing the best flooring for the rooms in your home, it helps to know a few things. First, you should know how much traffic will be going through that room.
Second, take note if a room will likely have spills or have a high risk of exposure to water. Knowing these two things will help you pick out what kind of flooring is best for your room. Rooms like the bathroom or the kitchen will be more likely to have spills so you should choose a water resistant hardwood flooring for those spaces. But, what is the most water resistant hardwood flooring?
Solid Hardwood Floor Products
Out of all the different flooring options, this is probably the one that’s the least waterproof. Solid hardwood is a completely organic material that is sensitive to moisture changes. Solid Hardwood flooring requires more maintenance due to its sensitivity to water. You can’t leave standing water on hardwood because it can cause a visual change or structural shift to your floor. There are ways to keep moisture out of your solid hardwood flooring, but it isn’t the best when you’re looking for a water-resistant floor. A humidity or moisture change in a room can cause solid hardwood to produce a cupping effect on the floor boards. Cupping creates an unlevel u shape to the top of hardwood boards to produce a washboard-looking floor that no one wants.
Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring is Waterproof
Luxury Vinyl flooring comes in long plank strips with a rigid waterproof core. Vinyl plank flooring is completely water resistant. It will not sustain damage from any amount of water thrown on it. Vinyl typically comes in two cores, a WPC core or a SPC core. Both cores are made with hardened plasticizers that repel water. They are You can get this flooring in a variety of styles and colors that can pair nicely with your home’s overall look. Check out our waterproof vinyl flooring options here.
LVP is perfect for bathrooms and basements because it can handle water or the foot traffic found from a Brazillian farmer’s market.
Engineered Wood Flooring
Engineered wood flooring is more stable than solid wood floors. It can handle a higher variation of humidity throughout the year. These floors feature a solid wood top and feature several different wood composite layers for a core. The top layer has the highest quality wood. Engineered wood flooring is more water-resistant than solid hardwood flooring. However, it isn’t number one when it comes to being the best water-resistant hardwood flooring. High quality engineered floors (8 ply thick & USA made) are known to be very resistant to moisture changes. If you wish to avoid the solid hardwood cupping look for a high quality engineered product. You won’t have to worry if your hardwood boards will start looking like an accordion after three years.
Is Engineered Hardwood Floors Waterproof?
All traditional engineered hardwood is not waterproof. A new engineered hardwood product has a vinyl core with a wooden top or outer wooden layer. It is called engineered vinyl plank or EVP. Bruce’s Hydropel is a good example of this. EVP is a new floor type so we don’t have years of experience to express how water affects this type of flooring. It claims it is waterproof, but the wood exterior is still an organic material. Wood usually suffers from wear due to contact with water over time.
If you’re interested in the differences between solid and engineered hardwood check out our blog Solid vs Engineered Hardwood Floors.
Laminate Wood Flooring
This kind of flooring is straightforward to install. You can usually find laminate wood flooring for really affordable prices. However, it isn’t as durable as hardwood flooring. Laminate floors are prone to dents, and cheaper offerings develop bubbling on top to ruin the wood look of your floor from basic maintenance. There are higher quality laminates out these days though, visit our blog what is laminate flooring to know what features of a laminate floor you want to feel confident it will last for years in your home.
So, Which is the Most Water Resistant?
The answer to this question is subjective. Where are you planning on installing this water resilient floor? Is your house full of young children? Are you mainly worried about moisture changes or the lifetime durability of a new floor? We like to get on the phone with you to answer these questions. We aren’t looking to upsell you on a more expensive floor. Our goal is for you to love your new floor and buy from us again in 15 years. We want to make this happen by offering you the best information we can on water resistance and any other feature flooring manufacturers try to sell us.
After looking at all of these types of flooring, the one that is the most water resistant would be vinyl plank flooring. If you are looking for the best flooring option for rooms that are prone to spills, then choosing vinyl plank flooring for that room is the way to go. Check out our water resistant hardwood flooring options including vinyl plank flooring and find the best fit for your home.
Can the Installation Method Affect Water Resistance?
How your floor is installed can definitely have an effect on how lvt or lvp floor will perform. For instance, when doing an installation project in commercial kitchens I would use a polyurethane wet set adhesive with lvp floor. This would bond the vinyl plank to the subfloor, making it as close to waterproof as a floor can get.
