Are luxury vinyl tiles really hard wearing?

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Just how tough is LVT?

Luxury Vinyl Tiles are made from a blend of resins and materials to create what we all know as PVC. So just how hardwearing are vinyl tiles made from PVC? Can they really stand up to the rigours of daily life? We put a few tiles by Invictus LVT to the test to find out. Skip to the gallery at the end of the blog if you want to jump straight into the results.

Luxury Vinyl Tiles are created using a number of different layers, namely the thick underlayer, a printed texture layer, then a clear wear layer on the top which may or may not be embossed. Whilst these tiles and planks may look real, they are in fact printed out onto a thin layer of vinyl ready to be cut and stuck to the LVT.

The top wear layer comes in three main styles; some have no embossing at all, are smooth to the touch and are the most cost affordable. The second type is embossed – this is usually a few random textures which are pressed into the wear layer, however the printed pattern underneath rarely matches the embossed texture in the wear layer. The last type and most sought after is EIR or Embossed in Register. This type of wear layer follows the printed pattern underneath and is available on all most of the LVT we display in our showroom.

LVT or Ceramic Tiles

Do you choose luxury vinyl tiles or concrete, ceramic or porcelain tiles for your flooring? A question we get asked a lot in the showroom. One hundred percent of the time, we recommend luxury vinyl tiles.

Why?

There are a few reasons behind our recommendations, the first being the ease of fitting. For a fully trained flooring fitter laying LVT is fast and efficient, vinyl planks and tiles are easy to cut and shape and never shatter. Individually the tiles are lightweight and resilient to the general chaos you find in a fitting environment. Knock a box of vinyl tiles off the worktop and you end up with a dented box, do that with a box of ceramic tiles and someone’s not going to be popular!

So just how hardwearing are luxury vinyl tiles?

Ok, so – now we know what LVT is made from and why it’s superior to hard tiles lets actually do some testing and look at the results. Here we have a display sample of Invictus Victorian Treasure in Charcoal (one of my favourites for a hallway btw). This sample was left in a building site for around a week and was returned covered in dried plaster!

First we gave the board a quick wipe down with some warm soapy water to remove the biggest chunks of plaster, then using the recommended cleaning kit from Invictus we wiped over the entire surface to remove the more stubborn bits.

As you can see from the pictures below there is no loss or damage to the wear layer, it still has the exact same appearance as it did before it left our showroom. There is no staining, no parts have stuck to the surface or pulled the surface off on removal. The sheen is back and the LVT is back to new.

So if you’re worried LVT won’t be as hardwearing as your ceramic tiles, think twice. Their ease of installation, replacement and maintenance makes them the clear winner in all cases.

If you have any questions or would like to see some samples of LVT then feel free to drop into our York flooring studio, we’re on Clifton Moor at the back of Counter Interiors Kitchen Showroom. We look forward to seeing you soon.