Luxury Vinyl Plank near you

The core beneath the printed layer is the biggest difference between plank products, more than the pattern on top, and it's what installers mean when they talk about rigid versus flexible LVP.

Two planks that look identical on a sample board can wear very differently after a few winters of grit and chair legs. The spec sheet and installation instructions, not the front of the box, show what you're actually buying.

Waterproof on a box of LVP usually describes the plank itself: its core won't swell, delaminate or rot when wet, unlike laminate or engineered wood. Water-resistant is the more accurate description of the finished floor, because the click joints, the gap left at the walls and the cut edges at doorways aren't sealed, and water that gets past them reaches whatever lies underneath.

That matters most over a plywood subfloor or a basement slab. A dishwasher leak or an overflowing toilet can run under a floating floor and stay there out of sight, soaking the wood or feeding mould on the pad while the surface looks fine. Treat LVP as splash-proof rather than flood-proof: seal the perimeter in wet rooms where the instructions call for it, use flexible sealant at tubs and toilets, and after a leak lift the planks nearest the source so the base can dry.

Rigid planks ride over small bumps, but they won't bend into a dip. Each maker sets a flatness tolerance over a stated length, and a floor outside it lets the planks flex at the joints until the locks crack, click or pull apart. Meeting it usually means grinding high spots on a slab or filling low areas with levelling compound; the floor levelling page covers that work.

Basements are where LVP is chosen most often and where it's tested hardest. A slab can release moisture from below, and in muggy summer weather basement air can be damp enough to condense on cold concrete under the floor. The slab should pass a moisture test within the limit in the plank's instructions, with whatever vapour barrier or underlay the maker requires. Health Canada's advice is to keep indoor relative humidity between 30% and 50%, which in most basements means running a dehumidifier through the summer, good for the room as well as the floor.

Many plank products accept radiant heat, but not all of them. Vinyl softens as it warms, so makers that approve heated floors set a maximum surface temperature, and electric mats may need a layer of self-levelling compound between the cable and the planks. A floor sensor and a thermostat set within that limit protect the floor; the heated floors page explains the controls.

A floating plank floor is often laid over what's already there, and that decision should wait until you know what the old layer is. Older sheet vinyl, floor tiles and the adhesive beneath them can contain asbestos, and Health Canada explains the danger comes from disturbing such materials rather than from leaving them intact. If a suspect floor must come up, or be scraped or ground flat, have a sample tested first and use a qualified abatement contractor if it's positive.

Click planks go down without glue, which avoids one indoor source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs): Health Canada counts adhesives among the building materials that release them. Glue-down planks can smell for a while, so ask for a low-emission adhesive and keep the ventilation running for the first days.

A deep gouge or burn in one plank doesn't mean a new floor. Near a wall, the rows are unclicked back to the damaged plank and a spare is locked in; in the middle of a room, installers can cut the plank out and glue in a replacement with its locking lip trimmed. Glue-down planks are warmed and lifted out. Either way, spares from the original lot are what make the repair disappear. Warranty claims, meanwhile, are often refused for installation reasons rather than product defects: