Best Flooring For a Rental Property

Choosing the best flooring for a rental property is important as a landlord or investor. The right flooring must look good enough to make the house an attractive prospect for any tennants, but at the same time must be economical for the investor. You wouldn’t want to put high-end real wood chevron flooring in every room—unless the property is marketed to wealthier customers—and on the other hand you don’t want to select the cheapest flooring you can find either. There must be a balance. In this article, we will explore some of the top flooring choices that strike a balance between aesthetics, durability, and cost-effectiveness, making them ideal for rental properties.

Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT Flooring)

Luxury Vinyl Tile, better known as LVT flooring, or LVT click, has become popular in recent years. Vinyl flooring is a durable, affordable, and versatile flooring product that can mimic the look of real wood planks, stone, tiles, and parquet flooring. It is fully waterproof and hard wearing despite coming in thinner boards. This makes it the ideal choice for bathrooms, kitchens, and utility rooms. Most vinyl flooring options these days feature built-in underlay as well, combined with its modern click system, this makes LVT floors very easy to install and can be done by an enthusiastic DIY’er. Additionally, LVT flooring is relatively easy to maintain, making it a cost-effective flooring solution for rental properties.

Laminate Flooring

Laminate flooring is another popular choice for rental properties as many laminate floors are budget friendly, often coming in far cheaper than real wood or vinyl. Simple to maintain, easy to clean and care for with a bit of knowledge, it’s not hard to see why many investors opt for laminate flooring in their rental properties. Despite the price, laminate flooring is durable and retains the aesthetic quality that vinyl or wood may offer. This depends on the product, as laminate flooring is versatile, with many cheap options for a quick flooring solution to high end ranges that feature waterproof surfaces, which can cost even more than LVT flooring. Laminate flooring can imitate the appearance of real wood flooring, stone, or tile while being more budget-friendly. Some of the higher spec laminate flooring ranges are manufactured with scratch resistant surfaces, making them ideal for high traffic rooms. 

Engineered Hardwood Flooring

Engineered hardwood floors are the costlier option out of all listed so far for a rental property. Not only that, they can be more susceptible to damage if they are not taken care of properly, which would require knowledgeable and careful tenants. Engineered wood flooring is not waterproof, and water or excessive moisture will usually damage the floor if it is not cleaned up quickly. Many issues can occur from moisture in a wood floor, such as buckling or warping.

This does not completely disqualify them for the investor, however. Wood floors can be good to flip a property with, as they could potentially add value to a home, or if you are investing in higher-end properties for clients with more money, a real wood floor would be a fantastic addition to the home. 

Carpet

Carpets can be a double-edged sword in a rental property. On the one hand, they can be a cost effective flooring solution, and relatively safe as far as the market is concerned, since carpet is a popular flooring option. And, like laminate flooring, carpets are quite versatile and diverse in that you can get budget friendly carpets, often coming in quite cheap per meter, to higher end, more luxurious products which will set the investor back a little more.

Carpets do come with several drawbacks, though. For instance:

• Short life span

• Appearance: Statistically, people prefer hard surface flooring such as real wood or laminate flooring.

• Higher maintenance than hard surface flooring

• Traps odours, dust, and allergens

• Harder to clean

None of these issues present themselves with hard surface flooring options such as laminate. Laminate, for example, is easy to maintain, often requiring just a sweep with a soft bristled brush or damp cloth. It won’t trap any odours or allergens, and will look as good as new after many years if it’s well maintained. Carpets, on the other hand, will show obvious wear after a few years and can come with steeper cleaning costs. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, selecting the right flooring for a rental property requires consideration of factors such as durability, maintenance requirements, cost-effectiveness, and aesthetic appeal. For a property investment to be rented out, the choice will usually fall between carpet and laminate. LVT flooring should be reserved for bathrooms, utility rooms, and kitchens where spillages are likely to occur, though it is suitable for any room—only it can usually be costlier than laminate. Again, this all depends on which specific products you select.

Carpets can be a good choice, but laminate flooring is ultimately easier to look after, will last longer, and is likely to be more popular due to the recent trends with hard surface flooring.