Click LVT flooring has quietly become the answer to half the questions I get asked. Kitchens, bathrooms, rentals, hallways with a dog. Somebody always wants to know whether one vinyl floor can honestly do all of that.
Short answer is yes. In the right room, with the subfloor sorted first. That last part is where it tends to go wrong.
What follows is what click LVT flooring actually is, how it goes down without wrecking the locking joints, and where I would still choose wood instead. By the end you should know which way you are leaning. You will also know what to ask before a single box arrives.
(One layer of plastic. More to it than that.)
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Why Click LVT Flooring Took Over
Picture the job that used to need three different floors. Kitchen wants water resistance. A pushchair rules the hallway. Bathroom wants water gone on sight. A decade ago that meant three conversations and probably two materials.
Click LVT flooring collapsed all of that into one product. It floats over the subfloor on a locking joint. Fitting is quick. The floor lifts again if you ever need it to. The surface takes water in a way timber never will. A busy family can live on it without anyone giving a lecture about felt pads.
(Though buy felt pads anyway. Cheapest thing in the whole project.)
It is not magic, whatever the brochures say. It sits on a subfloor requirement that punishes laziness. The locking joint does not forgive mistakes either. Both get covered further down.
What Is Click LVT Flooring?
Click LVT flooring is luxury vinyl tile or plank with a locking edge, the kind that clicks together over an underlay instead of getting glued down at every joint. LVT stands for luxury vinyl tile. Most homes end up with the plank formats.
Each board is a photograph of wood or stone under a clear wear layer. The rigid core sits underneath that. It looks close to the real thing now. Not identical. Anyone who says otherwise has not put samples side by side in daylight.
The luxury click vinyl range at Jordan’s Woodflooring is Pro-Tek™, described by the manufacturer as engineered click vinyl with waterproof construction and a Unilin locking system. Designs cover wood plank, herringbone and tile effect. A bathroom can still look like a bathroom.
Pro-Tek™ comes in more than one shape of board and each one has a different job. Editions Classic covers the everyday wood looks. Editions Herringbone does what the name says. The Super Long Plank is the SPC one, aimed at heavy footfall. Excel Longplank runs on a WPC core for bigger spaces.
(Four boards, four jobs. The range pages sort out the rest.)
The Construction Underneath Click LVT Flooring
Most of the story sits underneath the photograph.
On top is the wear layer. This is where LVT gets graded. Forget AC ratings for a moment. Those belong to laminate. Vinyl gets judged on wear layer thickness instead, and the Pro-Tek™ figures run from 0.5mm on the Super Long Plank to 0.7mm on the Excel boards. Editions Classic and Editions Herringbone both carry 0.55mm. The product page table has the exact number for each board, along with the guarantee. Editions Herringbone is stated as lifetime residential and 20 years commercial, for example.
Under the photograph comes the core. SPC, or stone plastic composite, is the dense and dimensionally stable one. Every Editions board runs on it. WPC, wood plastic composite, adds a little give and warmth underfoot. Both Excel boards use that. Both are waterproof by construction on Pro-Tek™ boards. That claim belongs to the board itself, not to every vinyl product on the market.
Then the bit people forget. Every Pro-Tek™ board we stock arrives with its underlay already attached, a thin foam layer bonded to the underside. The Editions Herringbone spec sheet calls it 1.0mm LXPE foam. So nobody needs to buy a second roll. (I would push back hard on anyone selling you one.) Laying extra underlay under an integrated pad creates bounce. Bounce is what snaps those brittle locking joints underfoot traffic, and I have seen the aftermath on a job in Sutton. The repair was not cheerful.
The Rooms Where It Earns Its Place
Water is the first argument for click LVT flooring. Bathrooms, utility rooms, anywhere a washing machine lives. Pro-Tek™ boards are built waterproof through the whole board. That is a different claim from water resistance. Worth checking on whatever product you buy. (The manufacturer vouches for the construction. The room still needs a plumber who does not leave taps running.)
Kitchens take it well. Hallways too, and the Super Long Plank is the one built for that kind of footfall. A family hallway is heavy footfall in disguise. Rentals are the easy call. It goes down fast over a prepared subfloor and survives tenants better than most floors I have ever fitted in a rental.
Underfloor heating is in play across much of the Pro-Tek™ range. Hever Oak is stated as suitable for wet and dry systems, for example. The pre-attached underlay is low-tog and compatible with it. Statements vary by product. Check the page before anyone quotes you a system. We will never claim that all click vinyl suits every setup.
Two places make me hesitate. Stairs first. They want specialist nosings and a fitter who has done them before. Then south-facing rooms with no blinds. Constant direct sun fades a photographic layer over the years. A blind solves it.
Fitting It Without Breaking the Locking Joints
The subfloor is the whole game with click LVT flooring. The boards tolerate a lot. The joints do not. Locking edges are brittle under point load. They snap when something rocks beneath them. There is no bending first.
The standard is flatness within about 3mm over a 2 metre straight edge. Old concrete rarely manages that on its own. The Earlsfield rental flat in our case studies is the example I mean. Its subfloor needed plywood and levelling compound before a single plank of Pro-Tek™ Editions Classic Battersea Oak went down. It looked identical a year later.
Boards acclimatise too. Not for as long as wood wants, but a day or two sitting in the room beats laying cold vinyl straight off a van. (Even vinyl likes a night in the room. Wood wants a lot more.)
Expansion gaps here are small. Around 6mm to 10mm at the perimeter, hidden under a trim. The flooring fitting guide covers the general sequence. The manufacturer’s instructions for your board win every disagreement.
Glue-down vinyl is the permanent cousin of this product. Different conversation. Usually a fitter’s job. Click is the floating one.
Click LVT Flooring Against the Usual Suspects
Laminate is the usual rival on price. Its grade comes from the AC number on the box. AC1 to AC5 runs from light domestic up to heavy commercial use. LVT does not use AC ratings at all. Its number is the wear layer. Laminate also has an HDF core. Honest chipboard at heart. Water is not its friend. Spills mopped up quickly are fine. Standing water is a different conversation.
Engineered wood is the rival on feel. A good board with a real oak top still feels like timber underfoot. I have never pretended otherwise. If the room runs dry and the budget stretches, plenty of people prefer it. They are not wrong. Engineered wood does not give you a fully waterproof board for the bathroom.
Price sits between them most weeks. On an average job the vinyl quote lands nearer the laminate end of the scale. The fitting is fast enough that labour costs behave themselves.
For the comparisons themselves, the laminate flooring and engineered wood flooring category pages show the current ranges.
Cleaning and Day-to-Day Care
Day to day, click LVT flooring is about the easiest floor in this guide to live with. Sweep or vacuum grit away before it gets walked in. A well-wrung mop handles the rest. Nobody needs a cupboard full of chemicals.
A steam mop is the one thing I would avoid. The boards are waterproof, yes, but the joins still get steam driven at them under pressure every time you pass. The manufacturer’s cleaning advice is the safe guide here. The floorcare range has cleaners matched to floor type. Buy for vinyl rather than grabbing whatever lives under the sink.
Felt pads under furniture legs. A mat at the door for grit. Both are cheap and both buy real years on the wear layer.
(Same speech I give about wood floors. Nobody ever listens.)
Getting Your Click LVT Flooring Ordered
What sorts most decisions is a room list and an honest budget. Which rooms it covers and what the subfloor is doing underneath. Whether anyone has mentioned levelling is worth knowing too.
Samples are free. Put two or three next to each other in your own light before anything gets ordered. Screens flatter everything. When you are ready, contact the team for a quote. Or ring 020 3870 9960 and ask for whoever is on the flooring desk. They are a decent bunch. We have been doing this since 1992.
Trade buyers can sort supply and pricing through the trade account at the Summerstown counter.
Remember that three-room job at the top? Kitchen, hallway, bathroom. One floor covers it now. Provided the subfloor gets the attention it deserves.
