What is LVP Flooring? Who’s Manufacturing it?
First, I will talk about the LVP market in general. Most of it is made in China. This comes with prosand cons that I’ll explain more about later. Vinyl plank offers you a natural hardwood-looking waterproof floor. It can provide a stone tile look with vinyl tiles or LVT as an option as well. Great looks, cheap price, easy installation. Well then what's the catch?
What are vinyl planks made of?
What is luxury vinyl plank made of? It is a thick hardened plastic core mixed with polyvinyl chloride resins (PVC) and other materials like wood composites or limestone stabilizers. The different materials used as stabilizers in a vinyl plank product are reflected in their Vinyl Plank floor category of WPC vinyl cores and SPC vinyl floors. WPC stands for a wood polymer core and SPC stands for a stone polymer core.
I talked to some smart people in the LVP business to find out why most of the luxury vinyl plank options are made in China. The answer was not because they make vinyl plank cheaper! Vinyl plank flooring is the fastest growing flooring product type to date. The LVP SKUs are changing every year too. The flooring planks designs, specs, and the cost to make them have changed so much in the last 6 years that a US factory can't keep up. And these luxury plank changes happen so often that China is having a hard time keeping up.
Luxury Vinyl Plank Likes to Change
Vinyl Plank flooring has a variety of offerings that seem to change monthly. Three years ago we only saw floppy vinyl flooring, then the layer stuff with the foam core. Then more rigid offerings with a stone-composition core. Glue down options; then we got click together. Smooth, then textured. How about micro bevels? Bigger bevels? Painted bevels?
The fact is that we can make LVP flooring cheaper and better in the USA, but a US manufacturer would have to make it on a colossal scale. Think of manufacturing lines that are a quarter of a mile long. And warehouses that cover 50 football fields. Factories that produce as much as 250,000 sq ft each day. Wow!
The downside is that it takes 18-24 months to build one of these behemoth warehouses. It takes another year to get it running well. During these 3 years, the market has changed so much that the $100 million investment is behind the times. China doesn't need high-tech automation to stay profitable.
China Owns the Luxury Vinyl Market
So how do the Chinese make it work? They build smaller plants that utilize labor instead of high-tech machines, allowing them to respond to market changes much more quickly. It doesn’t hurt that the owners of the plants don’t have to worry about OSHA, the EPA, or any other acronym that could shorten a workday while more people are choosing LVP everyday.
So what does this mean to for this flooring to in the U.S.?
Expect 75% of all LVP sold in the U.S. to continue to be imported for at least another 10 years.
Vinyl Flooring Product Evolution
Now let’s talk about vinyl flooring innovation and their installation. Sheet vinyl came on the scene long ago with peel and stick variations launched right behind them. Glue down vinyl flooring came before vinyl planks with a similar installation to linoleum.
One of the first decisions the consumer makes is whether to use a glue-down luxury vinyl tile or a click-installation luxury vinyl plank. As a general rule, glue down or peel and stick vinyl tile goes in commercial or large multi-family properties. Single-family and small retail use the click-lock installation method.
The reason for click-lock to be placed in single family homes is mainly because of the ease of installation services. The lower price of glue down vinyl tile and product selection also come into play strongly for commercial applications. The glue-down, commonly referred to as dry back offers far fewer looks and less "feel-good" features. At least all of your LVP options are water resistant.
Are Luxury Vinyl Products Completely Waterproof?
We also hear about LVP being waterproof. Let’s quantify that. No, water will not hurt LVP. flooring, broken water lines, precious princes and princesses running in from the pool….no problem for your LVP. However, waterproof does not mean it is impervious to water. If you leave water on top of even the best flooring, there is the possibility of some moisture getting through the joints. And what about water going around the perimeter and under your baseboards? Yeah, there’s that. With a concrete subfloor, it really won’t matter, but to a wooden subfloor, it would be a much bigger issue. Note to self….clean up water in a reasonable amount of time. Or call my insurance adjuster.
Do I Need Padding?
Padding is another question. Do I need an attached back or no? It depends on your home circumstance, but a pad is never necessary for most lvp installations. With the lower-end, more flexible flooring, attached-backs are seldom used, as the flooring contours to the subfloor and is much less likely to have dead air underneath. It is the space underneath that causes the sound that begs us for a sound-deadening backing of some sort. However, with the more rigid SPC and WPC flooring, more air spaces are left underneath the flooring product, causing it to be louder. This is where an attached-back is nice. Like most sellers, we offer both.
LVP Padding Example – Floorte Pro 7 Series
Now we have the boring part behind us, and we can explore the more interesting aspects of LVP products.
How are Luxury Vinyl Plank Floors Made?
First, an explanation of how a LVP product is made:
Luxury Vinyl Plank Product Construction Diagram
In the graphic, you see first the wear layer and coating located on top. This graphic shows them layered separately, but they are in fact, merged together. The inclusion of additives into the wear layer can significantly increase the lifetime of your flooring. In other words, the more strength built into the finish and wear layer, the longer and more protected your flooring is from damage coming over time. More on that later!
Next is the printed décor layer. In Murphy, NC, we call this a picture. Then we get into the core material. This is another essential part of the core construction that determines how hard the overall product is. Think dents and dings.
The base layer is just hanging out in the rear, offering a nice place to attach the pad. There is probably another reason for its existence, but I have no idea what it would be.
I know you are all excited about the wear layer so I will cover that first.
Luxury Vinyl Wear Layers
The wear layer is what you step on. It is a transparent coating covering the top of your floor’s visual or “pretty picture” as I like to call it. This is typically made from a urethane-based protective coating. Some LVP flooring products like Shaw’s Floorte Pro or USFLoors COREtec’s higher-end products have an aluminum oxide finish that is better in every way. We can talk about that later. In 100 years of use, the picture, core, and the misunderstood stuff on the back will be fine. No scratches or tears. The wear layer will be a different story. How much wear and abuse that it will exhibit will depend on a couple of factors.
The most talked about, but the less important factor is the thickness of the wear layer. Standard thicknesses include 6, 12, or 20 mil wear layers. A mil is 1/1000th of an inch so you can see that a 20 mil wear layer is more than 3 times thicker than a 6 mil. That should last 3 times longer, right? Will it last long in a high-traffic area?
Is a Thicker Wear Layer Better?
Easy, Tiger! If you consider wear-through the measurement of a product’s lifetime, then that would be correct. I, however, in my ultimate wisdom, find the change in appearance to be the harbinger of durability.
Let me explain….if your flooring looks different in the traffic patterns than it does in front of the fireplace, does that mean it is time to replace it? It is this change of gloss level that is typically the determining factor, not wear-through. Change of gloss is caused by abrasive wear. If you had spent more time shopping for a quality finish, instead of falling for that thicker finish story, you wouldn’t be in this mess! Sorry….I tend to get excited. The absolute best part of my job, besides lunch, is helping a customer find the exact flooring they need. Sometimes it is the flooring they came to see, but more often it is something different. Let’s make certain you will be as happy with your flooring in 10 years as you are the day it is installed.
Can You Increase LVP Hardness or Durability?
So how do we make the wear layer harder, and more resistant to scratches? Additives! This is where we benefit by buying from larger companies. Smaller resellers tend to import LVPs that keep the final price low to customers. The additives that help increase the durability of an lvp are typically mixed into the wear layer. Look for additives with names like:
- ScufResist
- Aluminum Oxide
- ArmourBead
- UV Acrylic
Except for Aluminum Oxide, the other additives are branded by Coretec and Shaw Industries. We find their lvp to be the more durable and long-lasting products on the market. We believe these additives are included in their wear layers because they want to protect their brand loyalty with customers. They are playing the long game. Easy to install and easy revenue is not their main agenda it seems. If you have a different experience with their products please let us know.
What is a Quality Luxury Vinyl Wear Layer?
Shaw and Mohawk spend millions of dollars each year, promoting their brands. Do you think they are going to put a cheap 6 mil on the market that scratches the first day you walk on it? Not likely!
Currently, we are in an extensive LVP program with Shaw, so I am more familiar with their products and will talk about them.
All LVP surfaces are made of polyurethane. Polyurethane is absolutely wonderful! It cleans well, performs great with water, and maintains its clarity for years and years. The downside? It is susceptible to scratches. Or abrasive wear. How do we get around that? With those additives, I mentioned earlier.
Shaw utilizes one of 2 different topical finishes on all of their products that we sell: Armour-Bead on the less expensive products and ScufResist on their higher-end products.
The Armor-Bead adds ceramic particles to the polyurethane. This makes the poly much harder, and resistant to scratches. Shaw’s 6 mil Impress product will last longer than a box store 12 mil with polyurethane. It is important to be specific when comparing LVP options. COREtec’s 12 mil products are outstanding, but the Lifeproof brand doesn’t measure up. We will compare separate products and go into detail to find great options for your home.
The ScufResist featured on products like our Floorte Pro 7 Nobility is even harder because of the inclusion of Aluminum Oxide. Aluminum Oxide is used in the finish of almost all hardwood flooring and multiplies the lifetime of the flooring due to its hardness. Change in gloss level due to abrasive wear is not a problem with Aluminum Oxide.
2 LVP Cores You Should Know
Now we can talk about the different cores. Originally LVPs were thick solid vinyl products absent of a rigid core. While they are still sold today with that construction, the biggest downside was that these types of vinyl products telegraph bad. If your subfloor has cracks or holes in it, standard sheet vinyl or an all-vinyl floor will show them to you. Forever. Who wants that?
Next, we saw the layered products introduced. Different companies tried different approaches, but their goal was the same: to make a more rigid product that was environmental-friendly, a good value, and that didn’t telegraph. Over the last few years, we have seen many improvements in this construction, and have 2 choices for our upgraded flooring, WPC and SPC. The improvements made to LVP’s construction created a bigger buzz and more people were asking “what’s up with this vinyl plank flooring?” because all of a sudden it could compete with our flooring solutions.
Wood Plastic Composite – WPC
We will start with WPC rigid core. While it originally meant Wood Plastic Composite, industry people now refer to it as Waterproof Polymer Core. As you can see in the photo below this product has a, well, polymer core. WPC cores contain a mixture of polyvinyl chloride, calcium carbonate, plasticizers, a wood-like or wood materials such as wood flour. In addition to these materials, there is a foaming agent added to soften the planks. Why would you want a softer LVP? So that all ten-little-piggies on your feet feel comfier as you walk your new flooring. This softer composition makes the floor more prone to dents and is known to be less durable than its SPC counterparts. Every manufacturer thinks their recipe for a WPC the best. I am going to go with Shaw on this one, as their subsidiary US Floors invented the first plastic core product under the Coretec label. Coretech Flooring, under the Shaw umbrella, continues to be a leader in LVP innovation.
Wood Plastic Composite Example – Uptown
Stone Polymer Core – SPC
The SPC rigid core is a Stone Polymer Core. It is made using compositions of calcium carbonate also known as limestone, polyvinyl chloride, and plasticizers. SPC floors tend to be harder and more resistant to denting than WPC. One of the biggest problems in the LVT market is the inability to compare floors between manufacturers. Or even from the same manufacturer. How do we know which flooring will dent the least? Last the longest? We don’t. Warranties mean nothing, only that the floor won’t have manufacturing defects. Gee, thanks. If you want flooring that performs, be diligent. Feel the product. In LVP, weight matters. Weight is somewhat relative to how hard the core is. Harder cores last longer.
Stone Polymer Core Example – Impress
Lastly, we will talk about the visuals. Visuals are where we have seen (pun intended) the most advances recently. Where LVP flooring started with smooth joints, now we can get micro-beveled flooring or even floors with painted bevels!
Detailed Décor
Another significant improvement is the use of HD printed décor layers (pictures!) in LVPs. Shaw is a leader in this technology, and the continuing improvements in detail are pretty amazing. You will find the HD prints featured in our Shaw Floorte Pro 7 series and other high-end vinyl floors.
HD printed Décor layers – 7 Series
All LVP floors come with a textured surface to make them more realistic, as well as to keep you from slipping and busting your bum. Another advancement, and probably my favorite, is the ER surface or Embossed in Register. What this means is that the embossing, or texture, matches the photo, er, printed décor layer. If you see a knot in the floor, the texture will have a knot. Did you spot the grain? Then the texture will have a grain. If you see a worm, pick it up. The texture will not have worms. But you get the idea. ER doesn’t sound like much, but when you see it on the floor, or in a sample, it is impressive. Only the most expensive floors will include this feature. Duh!
Embossed in Register Textured Knot Example – Floorte Pro 7 Series
Hardwood vs LVP
A lot of our customers are asking whether they should buy a LVP or a hardwood product. In general, we think LVP offers a lot of value due to its durability and waterproof construction. Moisture doesn’t become a massive repair bill risk when you have LVP installed. A thick wear layer and quality core construction will ensure your floor will last 10, 20, even 30 years if maintained properly. Rigid vinyl flooring shouldn’t affect the value of your home more or less than hardwood, but it can be an acquired taste for more traditional-minded homebuyers.
Quality hardwood offers a lot of value due to its beautiful visuals and the feel it offers to a room. Engineered hardwood with thick veneers and solid hardwood offers the value of refinishing. If you want to change the color or refresh your floor 10 years from now, you can without buying a new floor or managing a new installation. As far as looks go, wood look vinyl comes very close to hardwood in terms of visuals but it isn’t a perfect copy. A lot of interior designers start with hardwood in their design roadmaps and mood boards with clients. Hardwood typically stays at the forefront with design standards. Also, hardwood will often last you 10, 20, or even 30 years if maintained properly, similar to luxury vinyl. Hardwood does pose a higher risk of costly maintenance or repairs due to its moisture weaknesses. Ultimately, what you prefer for your circumstances outways the pros and cons of lvp and hardwood. We hope we were able to help in explaining the differences between the flooring types.
At ReallyCheapFloors.com we would be happy to help you select the floor that you want and need. Give us a call, but be prepared to answer questions! Our staff has been at this a long time, and know what it takes to make happy customers!
