Best Flooring For a Rental

[Rob Duhon]

I just purchased my first rental. It's a single family home in the Dallas area. It doesn't need much work, but I have to replace most of the flooring and paint. I plan to replace the carpet in the bedrooms, but I wanted to replace the current carpet in the living and dining room with something nicer. The home will rent for $2,350/mo so I want it to attract good renters, but I also want it to be cost-effective and durable. I was thinking either a wood laminate, a linoleum that looks like wood, or a tile that looks like wood. Any advice?

[David Fernandez]

Originally posted by @Rob Duhon:

@Andrew Kerr @Mayer M. Does the Luxury Vinyl scratch easily? Have you had any experience replacing just one plank if it does scratch?

 Hon Rob,

There are differ the qualities of LVP. For scratch resistance, the thickness of the plank is not important, you have to look for the wear layer thickness. Usually, the thicker the wear layer, the more expensive it is. I usually go with 0.5 mm or 20 mil wear layer. 

Here’s a link to a good article (http://www.flooret.com/vinyl-basics/) about this and a table summarizing the difference in wear layer thicknesses;

Wear-layer in mm	Wear-layer in mil	Typical Commercial Warranty
0.1 mm	4 mil	None, or 3-year “light” use
0.3 mm	12 mil	5 year “light” use
0.5 mm	20 mil	10 year
0.7 mm	28 mil	15 year
1.0 mm	40 mil	20+ year