How To Tell The Difference Between Vinyl Floors And Parquet Floors?

When building their dream house, most people overlook the significance of having quality floors. In most cases people go for the cheaper option and forget to look at the features.

Importance of Buying Quality Floor

· Attractive appearance that doesn’t fade away soon

· Good strong and long-lasting support

· Reducing accidents caused by slipping and being unproportional

· Low maintenance cost and saves money for buying or replacing it.

It’s very common for people to confuse vinyl floors and parquet because they think they are all wooden but one is better than the other in more ways than one. This article will advice people who actually value their homes on how to tell apart vinyl and parquet floors so you can avoid being cheated by vendors and buying the wrong thing.

13 Differences between Vinyl Floors and Parquet Floors

1. Texture – vinyl floors feel more like plastic because it’s made with PVC while parquet feel hard and a bit rough like wood.

2. Resistance test – in order to differentiate vinyl and parquet in a hardware, you can request a fire and stain test to both. Vinyl is very flammable and will melt in seconds while parquet takes a lot of heat and time to burn. Vinyl stains very fast but parquet is resistant to stain.

3. Installation – parquet locks together and then it’s floated or placed to the floor while vinyl is installed using glue as single pieces. One can tell the difference if you pick a couple of pieces from both choices and see if they interlock or not. If not then that’s vinyl.

4. Appearance- parquet has a melamine look on top that makes it resistant to scratches while vinyl has a plastic top that can be scratched and show. You can try scratching or feeling a piece of both choices and see the results to tell the difference.

5. Price- vinyl is less expensive to buy than parquet but the price comes down to the same level during installation because installing vinyl is pricy.

6. Patterns- vinyl flooring comes in many different colors and patterns for decoration and artistic work while parquet has very limited appealing choices.

7. Fading- parquet flooring is protected against UV rays so no matter how long they stay in the shop they won’t fade but still look new. Vinyl on the other hand starts fading even before it’s installed so unless you find new ones you can tell they look a bit faded.

8. Water resistance test- Wood generally absorbs water while plastic doesn’t. One can take a piece of both choices and pour some water on them, the one that absorbs the water is parquet while the one that doesn’t is vinyl. Another thing that water test proves is how slippery and hard to clean parquet flooring is. The melamine surface of parquet causes this and it can be very dangerous which is why they are not recommended to go to places where there is water or moisture like bathrooms.

9. Hardness- Obviously vinyl is a bit weak than parquet. Try bending it and even though they are hard, vinyl flooring pieces will give in to bend than parquet which is hard.

10. Logo- vinyl is a hard made material that in most cases is manufactured from scratch by a plastic company which will put their logo inside the final product. Parquet on the other hand is natural so it’s very hard to find a company even the one that modifies it to flooring material putting their stamp on them.

11. Color- One can check the depth area of the material to see if the color is true and deep. Vinyl has true color that goes through and through while parquet has color only on the top surface. You can see on the sides of parquet that its color is not inside.

12. Temperature- You can touch a sample of both vinyl flooring and parquet and feel how cold vinyl is. Wood does not get cold so parquet will always be warm even with its melamine casing.

Its might be a bit difficult to know the differences between vinyl floors and parquet floors especially if the vendor is lying to you but with these 13 qualities one is bound to tell one from the other just by taking some time to look at them carefully. One can select which floor he/she wants to install at home.