Luxury Vinyl Plank in Johnstown, OH

Rigid SPC cores are dense and dimensionally stable, which makes them the sensible choice over concrete slabs and in rooms that get hot in the afternoon and cool overnight. They are also the least forgiving of a wavy subfloor, because a rigid plank bridges a dip rather than following it, and a bridged dip becomes a hollow spot you can hear.

Softer cores feel warmer and quieter and hide minor subfloor variation better, at the cost of denting more easily under a heavy point load. On upper floors in older houses around Newark and Granville that trade is often the right one. On a basement slab it usually is not.

These are the rooms LVP was made for. Water arrives on a schedule — boots in February, a dishwasher that will eventually leak, a dog that drinks enthusiastically — and a wood floor in that position spends its life either being babied or being damaged.

The other advantage is continuity. Running the same plank from an entry through a kitchen and into a family room reads as one floor rather than three, which makes a modest house feel considerably larger than a floor that changes at every doorway.