A rigid plank product like CoreTec will offer many benefits. Just remember: vinyl does NOT like "wood finishes". That normally means SOMETHING has to be used underneath to separate the wood from the vinyl. CoreTec Plus has the cork underlayment attached which is enough to keep the two products from touching. A floating vinyl floor will make the most sense over the hardwood. A glue down option is available over the slab portion...but it is hard to find a floating vinyl and a glue down vinyl in the same visual (appearance). This gets awfully tricky if you want glue down. As for "scratches", you have already stated you are hard on floors. A vinyl floor will take abuse a SNICK better than hardwood - but not much more. The "wear-ability" you describe (biggest concerns is the finish scratching and wearing away color) is appropriate for porcelain tile. When it comes to vinyl, I would EXPECT scratches. There is no way around this unless you move to porcelain tile. And if you have old, large windows that do NOT have UV block on them then I would also expect colour changes because of the heat/UV exposure. Again, nothing will prevent this other than porcelain tile...or a massive upgrade in windows (if you have that on your "to do list" then I HIGHLY recommend you do it BEFORE you get new floors....it will save you THOUSANDS of dollars of heartache). And then there is the 'matte' or low-gloss finishes that are currently trendy...they are VERY difficult to live with (regardless of material...they all have visual issues that MANY homeowners complain about afterwards). Vinyl can do MANY things....but it will still scratch and it will still change colour if you have lower grade/older windows in the home.

I have been living with the acorn color for two weeks now on my second floor. I am more traditional, like you are. The floor installer said he liked working with this product and the quality was excellent. It looks very nice and it is comfortable underfoot, easy to clean and doesn’t show dirt. The only thing that surprised me was that the actual product out of the box looks darker than the sample, but I do still like it.

We are thinking the almond might be too patterned. i like a more cohesive look . maybe natural linen, coastline, stadium Maybre cartwheel oak although reddish,maybe sand dune or is it yellow, maybe shadow too many choices and we all from front door.

We had engineered hard wood in our last house. The dog scratched it to bits. A door leaked too… it was sold as we could sand and refinish. Not true. The level to which we’d need to refinish was not possible to make it look good again. We put some vinyl in our current house. Not sure I’d use it in the kitchen or bathroom, but it’s holding up rather well. I just dust it and that’s about it. Biggest problem is room transitions. Our bathroom ended up much higher so bridging that gap was a wooden transition… not ideal.