As well known, flooring has a very long history and development progress, hardwood flooring, engineered wood, laminate, vinyl planks and so on. Today i will introduce two types of them, laminate and vinyl.
Laminate is a hybrid flooring consisting of plant fibers and melamine substances. The inner core is like MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard), which has a widespread use in furniture items, but with higher density. It has three papers, wear paper, decor paper and balance paper, and these are all soaked in melamine resin and glue. Melamine can provide a better wear resistance performance for overlay. Manufactures will also add Al2O3 to the wear paper to strengthen its scratch and wear resistance. Decor paper can print different patterns and balance can help avoid size deformation by isolating most moisture from ground.
Vinyl planks, mainly including LVT, WPC and SPC, are made of PVC resin and stone powder. PVC resin is another materials that can reach the wear resistance requirement. It has very similar structure with laminate, with wear layer and decor layer as well. However, it should be noticed that these are different from laminate because they are not papers. For example, SPC common wear layer thickness is 0.3 or 0.5mm, whereas laminate do not use thickness to describe its wear paper. Vinyl planks has an UV coating on the overlay as well, used to control its glossiness and enhance scratch resistance.
There are many similar and different points between them, and i will compare them from below angles as below.
All in all, both laminate and vinyl plank have its own unique advantages and characteristic. Based on their different feature, there are many different usage scenarios. Laminate is suitable for heavy traffic commercial use while vinyl plank is suitable for humidity environment such as bathroom and kitchen.
