Estimated difference in retal income after flooring change?

[Cait Andrews]

TLDR: In a 2 bedroom basement rental unit that is kinda nice, in a nice area, with all amenities, but nowhere near executive...what would be the monthly rental impact of having a uniform floor vs having a different floor in one of the bedrooms? Is replacing 4 rooms of flooring instead of 1 worth it?

And the long story:

Hi all, we rent a 2-bedroom basement unit in a desirable, high-income area. Some aspects of the unit are nice, we have a lot of nice finishes and amenities to try and keep it a middle tier rental, but it still has a drop ceiling with tiles and flourescent lighting, short ceiling height, the bathroom is a bit small and cramped, typical small windows, the soundproofing is there but isn't perfect. I did a lot with the finishes, but it's still a basement in an 80 year old house. We tend to attract recent university or college grads to out unit, young people that are still looking for a less expensive place but are sick of living in houses with 4 other people.

For the last 7 years we have had a nice chocolate brown laminate flooring down there but there's been some water damage in one room. We just finished our waterproofing reno and are about to put down flooring and drywall to finish the job. The old flooring is no longer available, so we are looking at either replacing the flooring in one bedroom with something that doesn't match perfectly , or redoing the flooring in the entire apartment (except the bathroom and kitchen; I already replaced the kitchen floor with a luxury vinyl plank and we have ceramic tile in the bathroom).

I would love to get a point of view from other experienced landlords about the possible monthly rent difference and caliber of tenant difference if I had a totally uniform floor in all rooms vs having something different in that one bedroom. Would the much much higher cost (100 sq ft vs maybe 400-500+ sq ft) come back to me? I feel like it's not worth it. 

The old floor is chocolate brown and quite consistent with minimal grain, but most laminate flooring now is on trend with grey tones and has more of a grain to it so it's very hard to match. The technology and styles have just changed. I did try to find a match before a few years ago for the kitchen before I decided to just put a light, tile-colored luxury vinyl tile in there over a drycore-type sub.

(oh, there is a secret 3rd option we are looking at - a store does have 100ft of our old flooring which is about 10 or 20 feet short, so we could intermix that flooring with another brown to at least have most of a match. the other, non-matching floor would be intermixed throughout the room. I think I like this idea.)

Thanks in advance for the thoughts and opinions!