Thank you to Beautifully Responsible for sponsoring this vinyl plank flooring post. All opinions and product experiences are my own.
At first it shocked me when I realized that I’d never talked about this part of our home here before, but then I remembered that the delay actually wasn’t an oversight, it was intentional because this was one of those things about our home that I really wanted to live with before I shared how I felt about it. The topic in question? Our flooring! A couple of years ago we updated all of the flooring throughout our home after a painstakingly long process hemming and hawing over the best flooring choice for our lifestyle. If you’ve been around here a while, you know that these big home improvement decisions have a tendency to plague me because the perfect marriage between form and function has always been my top priority when it comes to big investments and that perfect marriage is always tough to find. Which equates to endless hours of research, pouring over pros and cons lists with Chris, samples upon samples upon samples, deep contemplation and finally, usually months and months later, resolution. It’s just who I am! To cut right to the chase so I don’t keep you guys in suspense, the perfect marriage between form and function, much to my surprise after knowing next to nothing about this type of flooring before I dove into our flooring search, was a beautiful wood-like resilient flooring that we still absolutely love years later. Actually, I think I may love it even more now than I did when we chose it. It always feels really good to spend so much time researching, contemplating and then investing in a big home decision to then feel extremely happy about said decision years down the line, doesn’t it? That’s my happy place!
Vinyl Plank Flooring
There are so many more reasons we chose this particular flooring in the first place along with so many more reasons we’ve loved living with it these last couple of years. Important reasons. Reasons that if you’re new to the flooring game, you may have not even considered. Which is why I wanted to give you guys the full rundown on what resilient flooring is, why we chose it and why we’re still so happy we did – because if you’re considering investing in new flooring for your home, we know how daunting the process can be. We know how much information there is to wade through and just how many flooring choices there are out there to consider. To help cut right through that noise we partnered with the Resilient Floor Covering Institute and its member brands to share all of the info that led us to our decision to choose resilient flooring, in one place.
Once you’re done getting the rundown here, if you want to take an even deeper dive into the world of resilient flooring, the RFCI’s member brands, the value of resilient flooring or the different kinds of resilient flooring choices available out there you can:
- Visit BeautifullyResponsible.com to learn more
- Follow @ResponsibleFloors on Instagram and Pinterest
So let’s start with the basics. Not sure what the heck resilient flooring is or why it’s awesome? Here are the highlights. Resilient flooring is a category of flooring products, just like hardwood or carpet. It gets its name from its ability to “give” under the impact of footsteps and then spring back into shape. The term calls to mind qualities of strength – resilient flooring is built to endure whatever challenges life throws at it. So what kinds of flooring products are included in the resilient flooring category? Think engineered tile, luxury vinyl tile, luxury vinyl plank with rigid core, rubber, vinyl sheet and woven design flooring. All manufactured with sustainability, wellbeing and performance in mind. So not only are they beautifully made, but they’re beautifully responsible, too!
Some Examples of Resilient Flooring I Love
Like I said, though, in the spirit of the kind of honesty, transparency and in-depth information sharing we value so much here, I wanted to really live with our flooring before I let you guys in on our choice and all of the reasons resilient flooring, which in our case, is luxury vinyl plank with rigid core, was perfect for not only our design sensibilities, but our lifestyle and our values. I didn’t want to tout our love for our flooring choice or how brilliant we think resilient flooring is in general until it had been put to the test over time, and you better believe our floors have been put to the test. As a couple who lives in a pretty cozy little ranch cottage, there’s hardly an inch of our flooring that doesn’t get touched my me, Chris, our dog or our guests on a daily basis, so our flooring has seen a lot of action and not only are our floors just as beautiful as they were the day we installed them, but they’ve proven to be one of the most durable and easy-to-maintain elements of our home’s design. What’s more, they also just feel great under our feet and are incredibly quiet when we (and that energetic little pup of ours) walk around on them, which we didn’t realize would be such a game-changer when it came to our flooring and our overall love for our house. When we moved in the house had mostly tile floors, and you can imagine how cold and loud that was. Upgrade!
So let’s dive in. Here are all of the reasons we chose resilient flooring for our home during our flooring search and why we love it so much years later!
Beauty
Ok ok… we know that when it comes to flooring, looks are usually at the top of any typical homeowners list of considerations. And we get it! Our flooring is absolutely beautiful. It has a very realistic, wood-like look and feel, which was so important to us. If you’re not familiar with the world of luxury vinyl plank with rigid core (which I certainly wasn’t before I was introduced to it during our flooring search), it’s come a long way from the vinyl flooring of yesteryear and even in the years since we installed our resilient flooring, the offerings just keep getting better and more beautiful! It’s actually kind of incredible because finding materials that look this good with this kind of durability can not only be rare in the building/home improvement world, but is completely heaven sent as far as I’m concerned, which made this choice a lot easier for us. Practicality and durability may be fine as the only considerations for flooring in an industrial or commercial space, but when it comes to making a house a home, and investing in something that’s going to be a part of said home for many a year, the way it looks and feels is so important, and our resilient flooring exceeded and continues to exceed our expectations on the beauty front.
Durability
You may think that with a compact little pup like Hamlet and no kids (at that time… we’ll be meeting Baby Boy Carter this summer!), durability wasn’t necessarily a priority for us, but you would be wrong! It was actually one of our top priorities in our flooring search and one of the first things that led us to resilient flooring. Hamlet is an old pup and at any given time surprises us with new quirks and issues that are sometimes of the messy variety. In addition to that, we’ve been known to have a water issue or two in this old house as we’ve updated the plumbing and having to replace really expensive, not so durable flooring every time we got a fun little water surprise was one of our top reasons for being really, really intrigued by the idea and durability of resilient flooring and specifically the kind of waterproof luxury vinyl plank with rigid core we have. Also, as you guys know, our home sees many a DIY project on a monthly and even weekly basis, which means we don’t always feel like being super precious about our flooring or treating it like a delicate little flower. We want something we can live in and on, and clean just as easily as we get it dirty. Like I mentioned above, a few years later and it has not only matched, but exceeded our durability expectations. Our floors have advanced scratch protection and resistance to the harshest of stains, they stand up to those common spills AND traditionally wet areas like bathrooms and mudrooms (we continued our resilient flooring into our guest bathroom and laundry room), and help protect against the growth of mold and mildew without the need for harsh chemicals. How awesome is that?
Wellbeing & Indoor Air Quality
At the time, we had hoped to one day grow our family and I specifically remembering during the flooring search process reading about and subsequently researching the toxicity of certain flooring materials and how that would affect our indoor air quality, which is something I admittedly didn’t really know or think about until we started our flooring search. And now here we are a few years later, ready to welcome our baby boy, and I’m just so grateful that we took indoor air quality and the toxicity of the materials used to manufacture flooring products into consideration during our flooring search and decided to make finding a non-toxic product a priority. Once I knew that resilient flooring meet applicable third-party certification standards for contributing to good indoor air quality and/or being free from hazardous substances such as formaldehyde, it was such a weight off to know that we ultimately chose flooring we can feel good about living with and touching on a daily basis in our home. What’s more, resilient flooring is made with advanced wear layers that make it easy to clean and maintain without the need for harsh chemicals.
Sustainability/Eco Friendly
In addition to non-toxic materials and indoor air quality, the sustainability aspect is such a big part of why we chose resilient flooring for our home. Again, before we started the flooring search the sustainability or eco-friendliness of the flooring in our home wasn’t necessarily something on our radar, but you better believe it is now! RFCI member brands and their resilient flooring products work to remove the need to harvest less-abundant natural resources by combining highly abundant natural ingredients (limestone, for example) with synthetic materials (like vinyl) to create long-lasting, highly durable, nature-inspired designs. Improving efficiency in manufacturing means less greenhouse gases are emitted in the process – and thus less carbon is “embodied” within the product. They’re also constantly finding new solutions to reduce energy, water, and material waste; recycling unused, factory-made material back into products.
Affordability
Though not our top top priority (we knew we’d be investing in this project), affordability was a factor in keeping this flooring in the running until the end. At that time, we had about 675 home improvement projects on our list to update our cozy little cottage and make it the functional, beautiful home we love so much now, and flooring was just one of the bigger pieces of that puzzle . So affordability and budget definitely ended up factoring into our love story with our flooring. We feel like we got exceptional value with the resilient flooring we chose, and that always wins my heart. It just makes ya feel good to know you got a superior product and max value with a big project like this, doesn’t it?
Do you have vinyl plank flooring? Let me know in a comment below!
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