The Pros and Cons of Vinyl Flooring in Bathrooms
Bathrooms are always prone to large amounts of water. This is the driving factor behind the flooring you’ll choose – it needs to resist this. There’s a long list of flooring types on the market, but very few can handle the trails a bathroom will put on its flooring.
Let’s highlight the pros and cons of vinyl flooring in general then weigh them up with other flooring types to see if it’s the best fit for a bathroom.
Last Updated: 22/04/2024
Contents
What Makes Vinyl Flooring A Great Choice?
Resistance and Durability
Vinyl has a firm surface, which is very resistant, waterproof, stain proof and very budget friendly. Its firm surface means that when dust, dirt or pet hair fall on it, a quick vacuum will remove it. You can also sweep up with vinyl, although the vacuum is probably a better bet for these.
Added Warmth
Its foamy base layer gives Vinyl Flooring insulating properties, making it warmer than laminate flooring but colder than carpet. It also has some sound dampening properties because of this foamy layer too!
Easy Cleaned
Vinyl can be wiped down or deep cleaned with bleach and other cleaning chemicals to eliminate germs and bacteria. Food spills are a Kitchen Roll wipe away!
Liquid Resistance
The waterproof properties mean you could quite literally throw a bucket of cleaning solution at the floor and then just wipe it up and it’ll handle the intense liquid absolutely fine, where carpet would be ruined and laminate would have a hard time, possibly swelling and needing to be replaced.
The Few Drawbacks To Vinyl Flooring
Although vinyl is an undeniable flooring material with some excellent properties, it has some disadvantages of its own as well. Among the disadvantages of vinyl, there are a few that cannot be ignored.
Durable, but not as much as Laminate
Due to its inability to withstand heavy loads and the fact that it can be damaged by sharp objects, the main issue with this material is that it does not have the strength of other materials like laminate wood. You may also need to purchase extra planks or tiles as backup so if you have any left after install, keep them in a cupboard just in case!
However, as long as you treat your flooring right, it shouldn’t suffer damage like this. The surface is resistant, so light scrapes are fine. Just be careful dragging heavy fridge freezers across it!
Colours Can Fade In Direct Sunlight
While this may sound bad, it is not as bad as you might think. The colour fade in vinyl flooring is due to direct sunlight exposure, which is why it is not recommended for outdoor or conservatory use due to extreme sunlight. In Kitchens vinyl flooring should not fade unless you have massive windows with no curtains or blinds.
Not Biodegradable And Difficult To Recycle
Since the material is made from plastic, it does not degrade very easily even after it is disposed of. The material is also not generally recyclable although by the time your flooring is old and worn things may have changed. Disposing of vinyl flooring currently however generally means sending it to landfill if it can’t be upcycled.
Is Vinyl Flooring Suitable For Bathroom Floors?
Your flooring options are typically Stone and Tile, Laminate or Vinyl flooring in a bathroom. Each has benefits, each has drawbacks.
Stone and Tile flooring is extremely durable and they add a level of zen and style that can’t easily be matched. Their faults lie in how they’re laid and the material they’re made of. Stone and tile floorings must be coated with a protective, water resistant sealant. This should be applied every few years.
Stone is porous, which allows water to seep in, so this must be resisted. Also the grout that bonds them to the floor is prone to damage when introduced to heavy water – this must be protected too as mould can quickly start to grow in the humid conditions that bathrooms tend to assure. The price of this flooring is also substantial, typically it’s the most expensive on this list.
Laminate flooring is cheaper. It has excellent resistance to scratches and foot traffic. That’s about where its benefits end for bathroom flooring. Laminate plans will swell if a decent amount of water is left on them, which is almost a certainty in a bathroom. Wet footsteps and spills from the shower can mean the end of affected planks in your laminate flooring.
In comes vinyl flooring. The Zen and style you get from stone flooring can be mimicked by vinyl flooring. It’s not an exact match but as aesthetics go, it’s quite close. It doesn’t need the grout that stone tiles do, so you don’t have to protect that either.
A spill that would make laminate swell and expand, vinyl will shrug off easily. It’s also warmer under foot than laminate and stone thanks to its squishy base creating an insulative barrier against the cold floor below it.
It’s usually the cheapest option too. Which makes Vinyl flooring the best choice in our books for bathroom flooring.
How To Replace Your Bathroom Floor For £10
You can replace your flooring for as little as £10 per week! We’ve had thousands of people use our Pay Weekly Flooring Plans now, and over 2500 of them have left us amazing 5 star reviews on Trustpilot!
In a nut shell, our plans let you pick whichever flooring type you’d like, such as carpet, vinyl or laminate, which we have wide ranges of options in each to choose from. With carpet and laminate, you get free underlay. With each flooring type we’ll include everything we need to fit it for free too, such as under door trims and carpet grippers.
We don’t charge interest, we don’t perform any credit checks and there’s no hidden fees. The cost of the flooring is all you pay, whether it takes you 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months – the overall amount stays the same, and prices start from £10 per week! Fill in the form below to learn more!
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About The Author
Matt
Matt is a master at gathering relevant information and rolling it into a ball of digestibility. Fuelled by caffeine and metal bands, you'll usually find him in the office either writing blog posts with verification from our most experienced flooring fitters, creating new ad designs, working on our social media and website or finding ways to improve our customer's whole experience with us. Matt is part of the background force that keeps the Pay Weekly side of Easipay Carpets growing.
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