If you are looking for new tile for your home, you have undoubtedly heard of luxury vinyl tile. When it comes to tile floors, you may be considering ceramic tile or luxury vinyl and wondering if there are advantages of using luxury vinyl over ceramic tile.
We recently replaced our foyer tile and when we started the process, we weren’t sure which type of tile we wanted to use or what made the most sense for our space. We noticed that the luxury vinyl options very closely mimicked the look of the natural materials including wood, stone, or tile, which made it even more appealing.
Why use Luxury Vinyl Tile?
We began to do our research on luxury vinyl tile to see what all the hype was about. Our home currently had ceramic tile, but it was original to our 40 year old house and had seen the end of its days.
These are the 7 advantages we found of using luxury vinyl in our home:
- Durability: Luxury vinyl is a highly durable flooring option that can withstand heavy foot traffic and everyday wear and tear.
- Water resistance: Luxury vinyl is water-resistant, making it a great choice for bathrooms, kitchens, and other high-moisture areas.
- Cost-effective: Luxury vinyl is generally less expensive than other flooring options, such as hardwood or tile.
- Easy to install: Luxury vinyl can be installed as a floating floor, which means it can be easily installed over existing floors.
- Design versatility: Luxury vinyl is available in a wide range of colors, patterns, and textures, allowing you to customize the look of your flooring to match your personal style.
- Low maintenance: Luxury vinyl is easy to clean and maintain, requiring only regular sweeping and mopping.
- Comfortable underfoot: Luxury vinyl has a softer surface than tile or hardwood, making it more comfortable to stand on for long periods of time. It is also much warmer than ceramic tile on those cold days!
Luxury Vinyl Designs
We found that many of the luxury vinyl options so closely mimicked the ceramic tile designs we liked, that we often could not tell the difference standing and looking down at them on the floor. This may be a big concern for many people when it comes to luxury tile because they want to know that it will look nice and not like a cheap alternative to real tile.
When it comes to luxury vinyl, we found many options that looked very similar to our favorite ceramic tile options. Vinyl wood flooring is also a really popular option with more choices than even the tile patterns.
Cost of Luxury Vinyl Tile vs Ceramic Tile
Our next concern was what the cost difference would be if we were to choose luxury vinyl tile for our floor. In our experience, luxury vinyl and ceramic tile were comparable in price. Some vinyl options were more expensive than ceramic tile and vice versa.
Where the real cost difference comes in is the labor costs of installing real tile. The extra material including mortar and grout not only adds extra costs but the installation itself is more time consuming and labor intensive. Our quote for installation of ceramic tile was double that of the luxury vinyl tile (this does not include materials).
Installation of the luxury vinyl was a much easier install and took only half a day to complete. The best part was that the kids were able to run around on it right away. With tile, we would have been required to stay off of the floor for a couple of days.
Maintenance of Luxury Vinyl Tile
With four kids, one of the main factors for us in choosing luxury vinyl over ceramic tile was that it is so low maintenance requiring only sweeping and mopping. The vinyl is also waterproof which is also a great benefit with kids.
We had the vinyl installed in our foyer and the kids track in more dirt and mud than you can imagine and it has been a breeze to keep clean. Our previous tile floor was so hard to clean and we had to avoid getting too much water on it because it damaged the grout.
Comfort
Another factor to consider is an important one; how will the floor feel to walk on? We brought several full size tiles home and walked around on them and noticed a few things that helped us make up our minds. The ceramic tile felt much colder on our feet than the vinyl and no one likes cold feet!
The vinyl tile also has a much softer feel than the ceramic tile, which is really important if it’s a room like the kitchen or laundry room where you will be standing a lot. We really preferred the feel of the luxury vinyl over the ceramic tile.
