Tile Flooring: Porcelain, Ceramic, and What Actually Fails

Tile flooring almost never wears out. When a tile floor fails, the tile is rarely what failed, which is why the specification worth reading is the one for everything underneath it.

Carpet Flooring: Fibre, Density and What Decides How It Wears

Carpet flooring is the one floor where what you can see tells you least. The two things that decide how long it lasts are both on the label, and neither is the part you touch.

Laminate Flooring: What It Is and How the AC Rating Works

Laminate flooring is the only common floor that is rated rather than measured, and that rating is the most useful number on the box once you know how to read it.

Engineered Hardwood: What It Is and Where It Belongs

Engineered hardwood is real wood, and nearly every question worth asking about it concerns the part you cannot see. A practical guide to veneer, core and finish.

Luxury Vinyl Plank: What It Is and How to Judge One

Two luxury vinyl plank floors that look identical in a showroom can differ by a decade of service life. The number that decides it is printed in a unit almost everyone misreads.

Solid Hardwood Flooring: What It Is and How Long It Lasts

Solid hardwood flooring is the only common floor that can outlive the person who installs it. Everything difficult about it comes from the same fact that makes it last.