NOTHING "luxury" about any flooring from Costco.

One cheap temporary flooring is as good as another. And lasts about as long when it's installed with the same care as the laminate was. Don't have expectations above what the floor will actually provide and you wont be disappointed. And in a few years, you can rinse and repeat the cycle. A cheap floor or a kludge to get you by ends up being the most expensive choice that you can make.

Or, choose a great timeless wood floor and do the project once correctly.

Costco partners with Shaw Flooring, I work for a flooring company and we do Costco road shows, Costco strictly sells Shaw Flooring! Carpet and hard flooring.

Last fall I installed (all by myself, no help from hubby) the Costco vinyl plank flooring in my basement craft room. I am reasonably handy - but it wasn't difficult. It looks terrific - way better than a bare concrete floor. It won't get heavy traffic, so that wasn't a consideration, but the flooring appeared pretty sturdy and as long as you're careful not to force it (particularly on the ends) it goes together pretty easily. If you want it to look its best, you do need to lay it out - open several boxes at a time, and match up the dark and light sections end to end. I wish I could take a better picture of it showing the entire room, but right now it's full of furniture that needs refinishing and various other things that haven't yet found a home - including all our art - in our new house. Here's the section by the door which is where I started. I got better at matching it once I figured it all out. I also should have made the bit at the door extend through the doorway, so that the transition strip was in the doorway, not on the room side of the door, but that was lack of planning on my part. ;)

All that aside - I'm not sure I'd put this stuff throughout a house, if I was trying to upgrade the look of the house. It was about $3.50 a square foot to buy (here in Canada), and for a basement room that otherwise would have a bare concrete floor, it was ideal. For living areas in a house, real hardwood - solid or engineered - is a better investment. The material costs are not *that* much higher and if you're reasonably handy and can either rent or borrow a compressor, a nailer and a saw, along with various hand tools you can do it yourself. Of course, if you need to pay someone else to install it, then the cost will be substantially higher.

With a large dog, I'd stick with the harder hardwoods - and one with some pattern and variation. Oak is very good at hiding scratches - especially if you get a satin, rather than high gloss finish and stick to the natural shades, rather than something dark (which you don't want anyway, or you'll spend your life vacuuming up dog and cat hair). You may be able to find something on sale or an end of line etc. to help keep the costs down. I'd avoid the cheap Chinese crap they sell at HD however - it may appear less expensive, but the stuff we got (and returned) some years ago would have had at least 20-25% waste and was not well finished.

@flaswp what do you do to keep rugs from "traveling"? Thank you

costco sells mowhawk great!!!! LVP for the price and lasts forever dont listen to these people who think they paid more so its gonna be better WRONG!