Vinyl flooring has been a staple design option for decades, and its advantages range from a sophisticated decoration style to a floor that’s resistant to whatever you throw at it. For those unfamiliar with vinyl flooring, what makes it a quality selection for your home is its ability to replicate a variety of surfaces, ranging from stone to wood to ceramic tiles. It’s also an excellent flooring choice for new homeowners working on a budget, as it can withstand extensive wear and tear over time.

The durability of vinyl flooring has drastically improved over the years, and whether it’s a pet walking on the floor or a child tracking in dirt, modern modifications of vinyl flooring have immensely raised the bar for preserving the condition of your floors. Here’s what you need to know when it comes to choosing the right vinyl flooring for your home, as well as weighing your options for installation:

Vinyl flooring types

When it comes to vinyl flooring, the two of the most-used formats are tiles and planks, with planks becoming more popular in recent years due to their resemblance to hardwood flooring.

Solid vinyl tile is an innovative type of vinyl flooring, generally packaged in 12-by-12-inch squares and featuring a photographic print coating of whatever design you choose. This is a DIY-friendly style of vinyl flooring, as the tiles are generally equipped with easy to use locking systems that allow for floating installations. Another distinct advantage to using solid vinyl tile is that it is simple to clean the surface. All it takes is a quick mopping session to get rid of any debris, and its strong durability will keep your floor shiny and polished for many years to come.

Vinyl plank flooring is an incredible flooring option because of how identical to a natural surface it can appear. This type of vinyl flooring allows for a more continuous flooring surface that is quick and easy to install due to more intricate locking systems. They’re generally available in a variety of patterns, and are also renowned for its moisture-resistant ability, which makes it a great flooring choice for bathrooms or basements.

Vinyl flooring options

There are four factors to consider when picking your vinyl flooring: style, thickness, pattern and color. When it comes to utilizing the space of a room, taking the style into account is where you can find the ultimate fit for your flooring. Choosing between vinyl tile and vinyl planks is important to decide upon when you’re only working with a limited amount of space in a room. Thickness becomes a factor if you’re weighing in the amount of foot traffic that your floor will encounter. The thicker your vinyl boards are, the more stable the surface you’ll have. Thinner vinyl boards are more cost effective, but may not be as durable. Finally, if it’s visual aesthetic you’re most concerned about, by all means choose a pattern or color that best suits your personality.

“More design selection, better longevity and a great DIY option for self installation are the main advantages of vinyl flooring.”

Vinyl flooring pros and cons

There are four basic advantages to using vinyl flooring:

● More selection with designs

● Better longevity

● Easy to clean

● Great DIY option for self installation

As for the cons of vinyl flooring, one of the main setbacks is that it may not increase your home resale value. While installation is easy, removing vinyl flooring is can be rather difficult, and if your floor suffers extensive damage under any circumstances, vinyl flooring could be strenuous to repair.

Probably, you are thinking right now whether Vinyl flooring is related to Vinyl Records, right? They are not related at all.

Vinyl flooring is a new type of resilient flooring in the market. Resilient flooring is simply artificial composite floors such as rubber, plastic, PVC, linoleum and the latest addition, Vinyl. They are produced massively in many parts of the world especially North America. Such synthetic flooring, which has been around for more than a century, act as a cost efficient substitute to natural floors such as wood, concrete, ceramic and marble.

Resilient floors also reduce impact of heavy objects by creating a cushion effect, hence therefore reduces "slipping" accidents.  However, as we approach into today's era, people are getting more and more self-conscious about living longer and living healthily. People begin to thinking about their children well being. Hence, they want to choose the best & 'healthy' flooring for their homes.

Some plastics, PVC, floors products are beginning to lose its popularity due to its excessive chemical contents used which may be harmful to the environment and health. Resilient flooring experts started to think of ways to create resilient flooring that is Eco friendly and safe to health. Most importantly, they must still retain the same or better benefits as traditional resilient floors. Hence, Vinyl flooring is born.

Within a short period of time, many renowned floor manufacturers from all over the world began to make Eco vinyl tiles and floor sheets and distribute them globally. Today, there is still much work to educate the public about the benefits of vinyl floors and it will take some time for people to accept this type of flooring.

Still, many popular corporations, are using vinyl flooring tiles for their stations, offices, malls and buildings. This is probably because vinyl floors are healthy, easy to maintain as well as comfortable to walk on. Another reason why they use vinyl or resilient floors is because they are "accident free". Hence, it helps company saves a lot of money and making their shareholders happy especially in the long term as it prevent unnecessary risks such as law suits, accidents etc.

Vinyl flooring, together with linoleum flooring are the first few Eco friendly resilient floorings in the market which is going to last for centuries to come. However today, high end resilient flooring (HERF) which is made up of 100% pure virgin vinyl pulp is taking over the conventional vinyl flooring with new technology and glueless installation system.