A case for LVP

I wanted to get a luxury vinyl plank (LVP) floor since I first heard about them a few years ago. Yes, there are some crappy (think, cheap) options in the LVP world, but if we start from about $4/sq. ft,, there are a few nice choices. I like LVPs because:

• They looks nice (seriously, they looks like real wood).
• They are tough (harder than hard wood).
• They are water proof (not all of them, though, but many are).
• They have good health scores (at least, the better ones).

For a small house, like mine, it made sense to install LVP in all rooms, including kitchen and bathrooms. I just can't think of a better alternative. Hardwood is expensive and hard to maintain. Tile is cold and can crack (not to mention the need to clean grout once in a while). Laminate is not waterproof and can chip easily. So, LVP seemed better in every respect. The only question that had to be answered was: which LVP?

After doing some research I chose Modin LVP (Arlo Signature collection) by Flooret. I had no experience with it and didn't know anyone who had it. The company only sell online, so you can't just check it out at a store. But I ordered several samples (they often run the buy one, get one free promos), compared them to the products I found at Costco, Home Depot, Lowe's, and some local flooring stores, and I got an impression that Flooret Modin LVP was better.

No, I am not an expert, so it may be a biased opinion, but here are two samples: one is Flooret Modin, another from a local flooring store:

From the top, they look very similar: similar texture, similar color. But let's compare the cuts:

The bottom sample is Flooret Modin LVP (from the Arlo Signature collection) that goes for $3.99/sq. ft. The top sample is from a local store and sells for $2.99/sq. ft., but you would need to buy padding, while Flooret Modin comes with the padding attached, so at the end, there is less than $1/sq. ft. price difference. I'm not sure if this will be visible in the post photo, but if you check the original, Flooret Modin's top layer is a lot thicker than the alternative. Also, why in the world would they (the other brand) use the white base? Any scratch, and despite what some may say, LVP can also scratch, so any scratch would show. Flooret Modin's gray interior texture is more sensible in this respect.

So I was pretty much set on Flooret Modin. Now the question was: which color? I ordered 4 samples:

Color-wise, Ashford looked the best, but I was afraid it would be too dark, so I picked Arlo. If I were to do it again, I would have ordered a couple of full-length planks because the small samples don't really give you a good idea how the floor would look like.

I can't say how good (or bad) Flooret Modin LVP will be in the long term but I watched a couple of videos made by customers who used it for a year or so, and they seemed to like it:

Here is the original video:

My contractor had not installed Flooret Modin LVPs before, so it took him a few minutes to figure out how to do it. At the end, he said, it was not too bad.

There was one problem, though, that brought up the main issue with LVP floors: it can crack easily during installation. That's what happened when they were installing the last row of planks in a challenging location (refrigerator wall corner). A small piece just cracked. We were out of planks. And there was no guarantee that another plan would not crack, so we left it as is:

It's not very visible, but it still bothers me a bit, so I will need to figure out how to correct it at some point. But other than that, the floor looks really nice.

UPDATE (6/2/2021): Just received this message from Flooret: "Due to high demand, the cost of raw materials has risen substantially over the last year. In order to continue offering the best product possible, we will be increasing the price of Modin Signature from $3.95/SF to $4.50/SF on June 30th, 2021 @ 11:59p PST." You have been warned.

NEXT: FRONT DOOR

PREVIOUS: TALK TO ME

FIRST: INTRODUCTION