Luxury vinyl plank flooring (LVP) is one of the most popular flooring choices for homes and rentals in Lexington, KY and throughout Central Kentucky because it offers durability, waterproof performance, and lower installation costs than many traditional floors.Β
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No, and in most comparisons LVP is actually one of the quieter hard surface flooring options available. Laminate is generally louder than LVP due to its denser HDF core and the hollow sound it produces when installed as a floating floor. Hardwood installed as a floating floor also produces more impact noise than LVP. The thicker the LVP product and the better the underlayment, the quieter the floor. SPC-core LVP with an attached pad is one of the more acoustically comfortable hard surface options you can install in a Central Kentucky home.Β Β
All hard surface flooring is louder than carpet. That is the baseline reality, and no amount of underlayment or product engineering fully closes that gap. The relevant comparison is how LVP stacks up against the other hard surface options, and on that measure LVP performs well.
Laminate is the most direct comparison since the products look similar and install the same way. Laminate uses a high-density fiberboard core, which is denser and harder than the SPC or WPC core in LVP. That hardness amplifies footfall noise, and the floating installation creates an air gap underneath that produces the hollow click sound many people associate with laminate floors. LVP's core, combined with the vinyl material itself, absorbs more impact than laminate does. Add an attached underlayment pad and the difference becomes noticeable, especially in open floor plans and multi-story homes where sound transmission between floors matters.
Hardwood installed as a nail-down or glue-down floor is reasonably quiet because it bonds directly to the subfloor with no air gap. But hardwood installed as a floating floor, which is increasingly common in renovation work, produces impact noise similar to or worse than laminate. The key variable in any hard surface flooring installation is underlayment. For LVP, a thicker product with an attached pad handles the bulk of sound reduction without any additional steps. For products without an attached pad, a quality underlayment installed underneath the planks closes most of the gap. Some LVP products are specifically engineered with STC and IIC ratings above 70, which is the benchmark used in multi-family and commercial construction for acceptable sound transmission between floors.
Most people assume LVP sounds hollow or cheap based on experience with older vinyl or thin budget products. Current SPC-core LVP at 5mm or thicker with an attached underlayment sounds and feels nothing like the thin flexible vinyl of twenty years ago. The hollow sound that people associate with vinyl flooring comes from thin products installed over uneven subfloors without underlayment. A quality LVP product on a properly prepared subfloor with appropriate underlayment is quiet, solid underfoot, and does not produce the clicking or hollow sound that thinner or older products did. If you hear that sound in a demo or a showroom, the product is either thin, the subfloor underneath is uneven, or both.
Sound is one of the questions we get at our Lexington warehouse more often from people buying for upstairs bedrooms or for multi-story homes where noise traveling to the floor below is a real concern. Our honest answer is that LVP handles it well, especially the products we carry. Our minimum is 20-mil wear layer on a 5mm SPC core, and most of the products we move have attached underlayment pads included. In a properly prepared room those floors are quiet.
One customer building out a second-floor home office came in specifically because his previous laminate installation had driven his family crazy with the clicking sound every time he rolled his chair or walked across the room. He switched to a 6mm SPC product with attached pad and told us a few weeks after installation that his wife could no longer tell when he was in the office from downstairs. That is about as good a real-world sound test as you can get. The underlayment does the work. The product just needs to be thick enough to support it.