What is luxury vinyl like? I can’t imagine vinyl being luxurious, but my personal taste is fairly hippy slanted so I tend to just ignore synthetic materials for anything pricey.
It's not "actually luxurious" so much as "it looks a lot less bad than old linoleum rolls" while still having high durability. Like how every new apartment is "luxury."
I would never use anything else in a kitchen or bathroom - it looks pretty good, feels nice on the feet, doesn't care about a few spills, and if you drop a plate you have a chance it won't break. However for other rooms give me real hardwood.
Depends on how much you spend in it. And especially how much you spend in the underlayment for how it feels under your feet.
Even in expensive homes in my area it's common because it has a lot of nice properties. Homeowners will pay $15/sq ft, which at that price you could get a real wood floor installed, for LVP that looks pretty realistic, is easy on your joints due to the nice underlayment, and is basically as indestructible as a tile floor.
It's bonkers to me how well my LVP flooring has held up to the abuse my dog gives it. It still looks brand new 5 years later, while the solid wood used for the steps between levels began showing visible wear only a few months after installation.
> while the solid wood used for the steps between levels began showing visible wear only a few months after installation.
The wood used matters, and the way it's finished matters a lot, with hardwood floors. You can get anything between amazingly-resilient and scratches-badly-if-you-look-at-it-funny, depending on how it's finished.
Lots of contractors cheap out on the finish, and pre-finished hardwood is pretty much always bad.
