We did our whole basement a few months back in luxury vinyl tile (that's the lvt above :) ) and just love it. I think it's a no-brainer if you have dogs that will scratch up hardwood or need waterproofing (we put it through our laundry area and mudroom). On a main floor, I'd still do hardwood, because all of the other options feel fake underfoot (barefoot). But if that's not an option, the lvt is warm, soft, and has some awesome looks these days. I really think it's going to completely replace laminate pretty quickly.

Another thing to consider when looking at the engineered floors is plank length. I just realized why I didn't like some of the photos I saw ... they had too many short pieces which gives the floor a choppy look and to me, it looks too much like a tile effect. The Uptown Floors suggested above sound great, and I will look at them more closely, but they still have "shorter" board (12" to 8 ft). I am looking at another company with board lengths from 3 ft to 12 ft. Those longer boards make a big difference in the overall look in a larger open floor plan. The longer boards do cost more, so I need to do some more comparisons and value of spending more for a more pleasing look. Their other specs are mostly similar. I think floors are going to be my hardest decision!

I had always loved hardwood floors and wouldn't consider anything else... Until we bought our current house. It has LVP (Coretec Plus) that visually is pretty good at fooling people into thinking it's real wood. When you walk on it, you can tell it's not because it doesn't have the echo of wood. But it also doesn't have the hollow sound that I remember Pergo-type floors having. Since we have an open floor plan, it is actually nice that is is a quieter flooring. We found a box with a few extra pieces of the flooring in the garage, and decided to test how hard it was to scratch/damage. Hubby dropped an ax on it, no marks. Then he "chopped" it with varying degrees of strength and it really took a solid blow to do damage. He also took a screwdriver to it, dragging the tip of the tool across the "grain" of the LVP (the grain is raised) to see how much pressure it took to create a visible mark, and again, it took significant force to make a mark that was noticeable. And with all of the marks that were eventually made, they all maintained the same color under the damage, so they weren't terribly noticeable until we held the plank up in the sunlight at the right angle. So I'm not pretty happy with the flooring, especially since we live in a mountain climate (snowy, muddy) and have large dogs. I think it will hold up very well. I have no experience with other brands though.

Trying to decide btwn the two. We have an active household of kids and a dog. Would like durable , easy to maintain wood-look product for our floors , that will last a long time . Any advice appreciated!