Install hardwood. No contest.

@Jan Donovan

You referred to "floating installation" which floorboards connect to each other to form a whole floor floating on top of a pad. Then your baseboards and transition moldings will hold it down. If you don't like the feel of a floating floor, I would consider a good quality engineered wood floor with resandable wear layer(3 to 4 mm top layer). Use "nail-down" or "glue-down" installation method. Quality engineered wood floor can be just as durable and much more comfortable and timeless. Good luck searching!

Isn’t there a new engineered wood floor that can be floated??

Are you thinking to do floating floor? Basically, all engineered wood floors can be installed floating. Some are click lock, most are glue together on the tongues and grooves.

You are asking for your problem to occur. If you want a quite floor underfoot, it won't be floating. It will be permanently fastened. Either gluedown or naildown. Floating is what is noisy.

@unique wood floors. It definitely sounds like I don’t want floating. I’m worried about up keep of wood floors. I have a dog and don’t want a lot of upkeep. What about tile that looks like wood??

I think a good engineered floor is your best bet, if you have strong feelings about the look. Wood-look tile doesn't really look that much like wood in the end. I have a dog and engineered floors are holding up very well!

We have engineered that is glued down. Also dogs. It has held up very well. It can be refinished, though we have not needed to do that. If there is some sort of damage, it is easier to repair wood than tile. We have it throughout our home, including kitchen and powder room. No problems with water. Some LVP and laminates can be glued down, but they will never look like real wood. Neither will the tile.

Dremel your dogs nails weekly. If you can hear their claws click when they walk, then they are too long.

We have laminate and LVP floor in our house and neither makes a clicking noise and both are floated . We have 3 huge dogs and a wood floor would have lasted about a year the floors we have look like new and are 16 yrs old . IMO wood floor with dogs at least bigger ones are never a good choice

Can you tell me what brand of LVP you used? I’m hearing better quality may not have that problem.

@Patricia Colwell Consulting what brand of LVP do you have and recommend? I hear a good brand makes the difference!

I had solid oak hardwood floors with dogs and it got messed up and was a pain to refinish. You can commit to maintaining the dog nails if you want.

When I was considering replacing the hardwood floors, I looked at a Coretec LVP product that was resistant to scratching. In the showroom, the salesperson let me take a key and try to make a mark in the samples. Some samples showed little to no signs of scratching - others did. (Obviously those samples were damaged afterwards, so ask permission first.) The pricing of the scratch resistant LVP was the same or more than hardwood and even possibly porcelain tile uninstalled.

For my current house, I chose wood-look porcelain tile. My tile requires 3/16” grout lines, so it won’t look like hardwood. I haven’t installed it yet. I don’t know if there is ceramic tile that can be installed without grout lines. Even so, it really doesn’t look or feel like wood. It’s pretty though, if you’ve accepted that. Ceramic tile is also hard on legs.

Also if you have stairs, you should figure out how those will fit in with the flooring you choose. My current stairs are solid oak treads and risers, which will work fine with the porcelain wood look tiles because the colors are different enough. (The tiles are lighter and have multiple tones. The stair tread wood will be stained more monochromatic and darker.) But if you need the stairs to match, you should find out what the stair-covering options are in the LVP or engineered hardwood lines.

@kelli_ga I like the look of wood look tiles. I have also considered them! Yes, some LVP are as expensive as hardwood. I’m checking out a few houses that have LVP and can hopefully make a decision soon!

I've used wood-look tile before and had the oak wood stairs stained and site finished to match the tile. People never noticed that there was a change in material as the color was a good match.

If you go LVP, the specs are more important than brand....look for at least 5mm and waterproof.. For durability and quality.

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