Ceramic Tile vs Laminate Vinyl Flooring

[ultrarunner]

Build my house in 1992; ceramic in the kitchen, Armstrong one piece vinyl flooring in bathrooms and mud room. So, side by side comparison.

Ditto about ceramic being durable, cold and hard on dropped items. Also, the grout is hard to clean if you're picky about it.

Vinyl looks as good as the day it was laid. Easy to clean and no seams to curl, leak, or trap dirt. Slippery when wet.

Personal preference- I picked a vinyl pattern that looked nice without trying to imitate the look of another material.

I did the 2 week Armstrong installation school back when sheet vinyl was big part of their consumer market.

The inlaid Solarium full spread was tough and you could gouge it if you really tried.

The less expensive products made on a printing press could rip easily such as when moving a refrigerator…

 

[riptides]

Personal preference for me is tile.

Been replacing and redoing floors on the properties and it is now refinishing original woods or tile installs. Carpet and viynl are not part of our going forward.

 

[ultrarunner]

Tile is slippery when wet too.
Agree with LouNY about it being cold and rough on the feet and legs.

Brother went slate tile at the ranch with radiant heating under the slate tiles… no worse for wear and the it’s not burning in a fire.

 

[2manyrocks]

Ceramic tile is about as durable as it gets. Just pay attention to whether you're getting a tile that is slippery or not.

 

[Rmart30]

Have you seen some of the stained concrete floors that are made to look like wood or tile?

 

[oosik]

We installed unglazed quarry tile in the kitchen. It has functioned well for 43 years now. Every year I scrub it spotless and seal it with a product designed for unglazed tile. The quarry tile has just enough surface roughness to be non-slip.

 

[Pettrix]

A lot of good information, I appreciate that.

One thing that concerns me about vinyl flooring is the area I live in has a lot of small rocks & sand that can get stuck onto shoes. I usually always remove my shoes when going inside but sometimes guests don't do that. I'm worried about rocks & sand scratching the vinyl flooring when on the bottom of shoes. I know tile is much stronger in regards to scratches.

 

[2manyrocks]

It is possible for the pointed edge of a rock lodged in a shoe tread to crack through the finish layer of ceramic tile. I don't think sand is going to affect tile much.

 

[Oaktree]

One thing that concerns me about vinyl flooring is the area I live in has a lot of small rocks & sand that can get stuck onto shoes. I usually always remove my shoes when going inside but sometimes guests don't do that. I'm worried about rocks & sand scratching the vinyl flooring when on the bottom of shoes. I know tile is much stronger in regards to scratches.

Wood floors are very susceptible to that too, well at least "real" wood. Maybe some of the modern engineered wood stands up better, dunno, don't have any experience with it. Other than vinyl in the kitchen and bathroom, all our floors are wood. We always remove shoes before coming in, don't have company often enough that it's a big problem.

I have to ask the tile floor proponents, what's underneath them? I can see it working well with a cement slab, but wouldn't a joist-and wood subfloor have too much "give" for tile? Given that it's brittle, you'd think any give in the floor would cause cracking.

 

[2manyrocks]

Tile over wood floor generally requires an added layer of subfloor material to avoid flexing.