Those of you looking to find a cheaper alternative to buying real wood for your flooring won’t find any better option than vinyl plank flooring. As a synthetic off-branch of linoleum, vinyl is a very affordable choice if you want the look of wood without using the real thing.
What makes it so popular is mainly its durability, making it perfect for commercial businesses and homes with steady foot traffic. As the owner of a business operating 24/7, you may have a steady stream of customers who walk yourfloors year-round.
Those of you with homes and children around already know what it’s like to have consistent floor wear and tear. However, heavy floor traffic can also come from having guests regularly in your home.
Vinyl is superior on this level, but you have so much more to know about vinyl plank flooring. When you buy throughthe Armstrong brand, you’ll be getting one of the most superior flooring brands in the nation.
Why is Armstrong So Popular?
One reason Armstrong stands out in the vinyl flooring industry is because they have their own brand of features to uphold durability and quality.
They stand alone in bringing reasonable price, style, installation, versatility, comfort, insulation, and maintenance. Within those features, they have some of their own branded names used for their meticulous designs.
Their vinyl floors are known for looking like real hardwood or stone without having to pay a fortune for the real deal.
In their vinyl plank flooring product, they offer two different types: One for commercial use and one for residential. Both have different features you’ll want to study to see how strong they are, as well as being waterproof.
Armstrong’s Residential Vinyl Plank Flooring
Residential flooring options at Armstrong are numerous, yet their vinyl products continue to stay as an industry leader.
As the company notes themselves, you don’t have to sacrifice style to get a low-maintenance floor. Their vinyl plank flooring products are able to take on all kinds of foot traffic, topples, or spills without causing permanent damage.
In their vinyl plank flooring products, you’ll be able to add these beautiful natural looks to numerous rooms in your home. You can place these in your kitchen, bathroom, basement, or any other living areas.
Design highlights are numerous, all with enough realism where most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Even experts won’t be able to tell whether it’s real hardwood or natural stone.
Luxe Plank with FasTak Install is one highlight product Armstrong offers. Here you can enjoy traditional, rustic, or exotic looks to the faux wood. Planks come in 6” or 7” sizes. This comes with natural stone-inspired vinyl tiles, as well as concrete-inspired vinyl planks.
In the Luxe Plank flooring brand, you’ll have 100% waterproof capability, complete durability, plus a quick and easy installation.
An alternative to this product is Vivero, giving you similar rustic and exotic wood looks. The Vivero product gives narrower and extra-wide planks if you need them for specific rooms in your house.
Stone meets petrified wood in this particular vinyl flooring, giving you a mix of the two most popular styles.
Armstrong’s Commercial Vinyl Plank Flooring
On the other side of things is Armstrong’s vinyl plank flooring for commercial businesses. They add many special features in this category to accommodate businesses of all types needing a durable floor.
Armstrong’s pioneering Natural Creations Luxury Flooring is one of their in-house brand names to consider.
You have even more options in this product, including large format shapes and sizes. Customization is a little wider thanks to the ability to create unique designs and patterns. Color choices are vast to help match your business’s interior design. Thanks to high-fidelity printing techniques and embossing methods, you can bring more realism to each design you choose.
A real standout feature, though, is Armstrong’s patented Diamond 10 Technology. If you’re unfamiliar with this, it uses cultured diamonds in the vinyl to protect against scratches, stains, and scuffing.
When shopping for Armstrong flooring, you know you’re buying a quality floor product when you see the Diamond 10 Technology logo. This technology even protects from alcohol-based hand sanitizers if you ever drop one of these on your commercial floor.
What you’ll appreciate the most about Armstrong’s commercial floor is the easy maintenance, just like in the residential product. Less cleaning time means less disruption in your busy schedule.
It doesn’t stop there on the features to protect your home or business.
PRYZM Waterproofing
To present an example of some of the great features Armstrong provides, their PRYZM brand name signifies rigid core hybrid flooring. At the center of this is 100% waterproof flooring, able to withstand the worst possible water disasters.
Using real wood obviously wouldn’t hold up under damp conditions, likely destroying your floor within days after a flood. Armstrong’s flooring products with PRYZM waterproofing strives for authentic design with ability to last a lifetime.
All planks in Armstrong’s vinyl flooring are waterproof enough to prevent swelling, buckling, or loss of integrity.
Buying this flooring for your home means enjoying a lifetime warranty if you happen to live in a flood-prone area. No matter where your flooding occurs (like bathrooms, kitchens, or even mudrooms), you won’t have to worry about rebuilding your floor at the worst possible times.
Even the slightest spill or stain from water won’t get under the surface to cause future molding issues.
The Gluedown Method of Natural Creations Classics
For more luxury vinyl flooring, you’ll want to look into Armstrong’s Natural Creations Classics brand, bringing you many of the same features mentioned above.
One of the great features of vinyl flooring is the quick installation method. The Natural Creations Classics off-branch has a relatively simple gluedown method for efficient installation.
This brand also offers various modular shapes and sizes inspired by beautiful wood, stone, and textiles.
Before you install this flooring, you’ll need to ensure the temperatures are suitable for the adhesive used. Maintaining a constant temperature is imperative before, during, and immediately after the installation takes place.
The minimum temperature in the room shouldn’t go below65F, and you shouldn’t exceed 100F 48 hours before you install the flooring. It’s the same 48 hours after installation to allow the adhesive to take hold.
Keep in mind you’ll need to keep temperatures consistent to maintain the service life of the floor. Temperatures shouldn’t exceed 100F, and you shouldn’t go below 55F. In a business (or in your home), you may already maintaina moderate temperature anyway through an automated HVAC system.
Before installation, you’ll also need to make the existing substrate on your floor as clean as possible with no debris.It might require a professional cleaning before the installation takes place.
Understanding Flooring Terms
One thing possibly confusing you before buying this floor is the differing terms used in marketing. Many times, you’ll see vinyl plank flooring written as LVT, which stands for Luxury Vinyl Tile. Other times, you’ll see the term LVP, or Luxury Vinyl Plank.
These terms shouldn’t confuse you, because they’re still somewhat the same, except one uses tile and the other uses planks.
With Luxury Vinyl Tile, you basically have three classifications: Monolithic, surface decorated, or printed film vinyl tile.
With Class I Monolithic, you’re getting colored tile with no backing. Class II Surface Decorated means you’ll be getting an inlaid tile with a backing. Class III Printed Film Vinyl Tile is photographic print film with clear vinyl wearlayer and a backing system.
At Armstrong, you’ll find flooring in the LVT categorygiving you everything from a timeworn wood look to marble. You can enjoy the beauty of nature directly in your home or business using this option.
Don’t forget about differentiating Luxury Vinyl Plank from the tile. Armstrong reminds how their brand has a tough commercial grade surface to resist scratches, stain, and wear. Plus, it’s easy to clean without having to use any harsh cleaning solutions.
What Wood Styles Should You Consider in Vinyl Plank Flooring?
The options available in vinyl plank flooring are what make it so popular, especially because it goes beyond giving you faux wood. It’s possible to find a look of stone, as well asusing metallic materials.
In the wood option, you’ll find a huge amount of choices with numerous textures and colors. Many of them give a rustic wood look to match any similar ambiance in your business or home.
As an example, you can find the Acacia design in Cinnabar color as a specialty wood product. It’s just one product of many you can find at a reasonable cost, including even cheaper discounts through Floor City or FloorIdeas.com.
You can get the Acacia wood look in a natural shade as well, including being available in brown or dark-brown color varieties.
The look of the wood falls under four main categories through Armstrong: Distressed wood, traditional wood, specialty wood, or stones & naturals.
- Sizes are also numerous, ranging from 3-4 ¾-inch planks to 18 in. x 18 in. in tile.
- Colors start at beige and go all the way to brighter shades like orange ot yellow.
- Low gloss options are also available.
- Stone Styles to Consider
Finding the look of stone makes vinyl plank flooring endlessly popular for many people. The Vivero Best and LUXE Plank brands at Armstrong have various products giving you the look of stone in tile or plank form.
Cinder Forest Luxury Vinyl Tile in Beige Breeze color is one popular choice. At 6-inches wide, 48-inches long and 0.100 inches thick, you can cover any sized area of your home or business. You’ll receive 35.11 square feet per box.
These lighter colors also come in Cosmic Gray, plus Gray Allison.
For residences, Armstrong gives you their lifetime warranty, but commercial businesses have warranties up to 15 years.
Keep in mind some of these stone stiles come in full-spread version and others with IntegriLock. The latter provides a very easy installation method you can do yourself. However, the full spread version is just as easy to install.
For a darker stone color, consider Concrete Structures Luxury Vinyl Tile in Gotham City color (which is essentially black). Multi-color options are also available if you need a mix to fit your interior design.
Adding Metallic Layers
You can find metal in the subfloor of some Armstrong flooring products. Adding this creates a more robustdurability, in addition to preventing scratching.
At Armstrong, you can find some of this through theNatural Creations Mystix Collection. Their Metal Oxide Zinc: NA881 tile is another good example in what these products offer.
Here you can mix textures and colors to create something distinctive. For branding, this is an ideal way to create flooring for your business. In your home, you can bring something different if you entertain guests often.
This again brings Armstrong’s popular Diamond 10 technology to help prevent scratches or scuffs. Those of you who move heavy furniture around often in your business (or at home) will appreciate having a floor that won’t look worn within a year.
Finding a Good Price on Vinyl Plank Flooring
While LVT and LVP flooring are already affordable compared to buying real wood or stone, finding further discounts on these products isn’t always easy to find.
If you search around enough, you’ll see how rare it is to find this type of quality floor at a budget everyone can afford.
At Floor City, you’ll be able to find the best prices anywhere on Armstrong flooring products. Many of the vinyl plank flooring items we offer go for well under a few dollars per sq. ft.
We make it easy to order your flooring through an 800 number available from 7-5 p.m., Monday thru Friday. Once you place an order, we’ll provide the closest available location for pickup.
For the best-rated floor coverings in the industry, we’re there to provide the most respected floor brands in the world.
