Cost to install vinyl plank flooring

There are plenty of factors to consider when installing a new or replacement floor but for most households the most important question tends to be “How much will it cost?”. You may have heard that vinyl plank flooring is a budget friendly flooring option but is that really the case? In this report we are going to lay out the true cost of installing vinyl plank flooring so that you can have a clear idea of whether it is the right flooring choice for you.

When you’re ready you can start getting quotes from trustworthy, professional installers in your area.

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Overview of cost breakdown

The cost of the flooring is the biggest price factor. Cheap vinyl plank flooring starts at about $1.50 per square foot. Peel and stick options can be even cheaper – with cost as low as $1.00 per square foot. Premium luxury vinyl plank and tile flooring costs $6.50 to $8.00 per square foot.

Here are the most common materials and their cost – they do not include installation.

• Standard vinyl planks and tile flooring: $1.50 to $3.50 per square foot
• SPC (stone polymer/plastic composite): $3.25 to $7.75 per square foot
• WPC (wood polymer/plastic composite): $4.00 to $9.50 per square foot for most options.

Installation labor cost ranges from about $1.50 per square foot for easy jobs and as much as $4.50 per square foot for complex installation where a lot of cutting and trimming around obstacles is required. If you’re handy, you might want to try DIY installation. It’s fairly easy as far as home projects go and can be a rewarding experience. Sure, you’ll probably ruin a few pieces while getting the hang of installation, but there are good cost savings to be had.

Removing and disposing of old flooring can add $2.00 to $4.00 per square foot depending on the difficulty of the work. When the subfloor must be replaced with new plywood or OSB, expect the cost to rise another $3.00 to $5.50 per square foot.

Here’s an installation cost table showing simply what is likely to be included in a low cost, average cost and high cost vinyl plank installation.

Factor	Low cost	Midrange	High end
Average cost	$1.50 – $5.25/sq. ft.	$4.00 – $7.75/sq. ft.	$7.25 – $12.00
New Subfloor	No	Maybe	Maybe
Remove Old Flooring	No	Maybe	Yes
Flooring Quality	Cheap	Average to Good	Good to Premium
Core Type	Standard or WPC	WPC or SPC	WPC or SPC
Job Complexity	Easy	Average to Difficult	Average to Difficult
Moving Furniture	No	Maybe	Yes
Installation	DIY or Pro	Pro	Pro

Vinyl plank flooring cost factors

Here are the reasons why you might pay closer to $4.00 or $12.00 per square foot for vinyl plank flooring. What do you get for the money when purchasing vinyl plank or tile flooring?

• $1.00 – $1.99 per square foot:  Self-adhesive or peel and stick vinyl plank flooring is your cheapest option. It is often a DIY project, an inexpensive way to cover bare concrete in a basement or give any room a quick makeover. The subfloor must be in near-perfect condition, because imperfections will telegraph through this thin vinyl flooring and be easy to spot. Wear layers are quite thin, usually 6 or 8 mils. Cheap vinyl plank flooring can be expected to look good for 3-10 years depending on how much traffic it sees.
• $1.50 – $3.00 per square foot: Affordable vinyl plank flooring in this price range is often glue-down flooring, though a few floating click-together options are available. You might also find stone polymer core, or SPC, flooring options here. They’ll be entry-level or “clearance” flooring. Good-quality standard LVP/LVT is considered water resistant but not waterproof. Thicker wear layers make the flooring more durable than most sheet vinyl and self-adhesive options. Most of the flooring in this category comes with attached pad. Fiberglass pad is better than felt, but it’s not the most important factor to consider. Vinyl plank and tile in this category should look good for 10-15 years largely due to a thicker wear layer of 10 to 16 mils.
• $2.25 – $5.00 Per Square Foot: In this vinyl plank flooring cost range, you’ll find very good standard flooring and quite a few rigid core vinyl flooring choices, mostly stone polymer composite (SPC) flooring. Thicker material and better wear layers make this a more durable choice, and you should get 10-20 years from this material depending on how heavily it gets used. Wear layers for vinyl plank flooring in this cost range are usually 12, 16 or 20 mils.
• $3.95 – $7.50 Per Square Foot: Most vinyl plank and tile flooring in this price range is WPC or stone polymer composite (SPC) rigid core material. It is often called engineered vinyl plank, or EVP. The flooring is waterproof, includes pre-attached underlayment (pad) to absorb sound and floats. The design might be click-together or loose lay, meaning each plank abuts those around it without interlocking design. The attached pad used on loose lay is designed to grip the subfloor without adhesive. Wear layers of more than 10 mils are most common with the thickest being 22 mils for most products.
• $6.00 – $9.50 Per Square Foot: This is premium waterproof WPC and SPC vinyl flooring. You’ll even find a few options costing more than $10 per square foot for the material. The wear layers offer the best durability and are 16 to 22 mils thick – and sometimes a little thicker. Expect this flooring to last 15+ years in residential settings and 5-10 years when used commercially.

Vinyl plank flooring cost by brand

There are a lot of well-known players in the luxury vinyl tile and vinyl plank flooring business.

Costs vary a bit. Here’s a list of top vinyl plank flooring manufacturers with the types of flooring each sells.

Manufacturer	Material cost	Vinyl types
Shaw	$1.50 – $6.50/sq.ft.	LVT, SPC, WPC
TrafficMaster	$2.00 – $3.50/sq.ft.	LVP
Armstrong	$2.00 – $9.00/sq.ft.	LVT, SPC, WPC
Karndean	$2.00 – $7.25/sq.ft.	LVT, SPC, WPC
NuCore EVP	$2.25 – $4.00sq.ft.	LVT, LVP
Tarkett	$2.25 – $8.75/sq.ft.	LVT, SPC, WPC
CoreTec	$2.50 – $7.00/sq.ft.	LVT, LVP
StainMaster	$2.50 – $11.00/sq.ft.	SPC, WPC
Mohawk	$2.75 – $6.00/sq.ft.	LVT, LVP
Mannington	$3.50 – $10.00/sq.ft.	LVT/P, SPC, WPC
Home Decorators	$1.75 – $3.00/sq.ft.	LVT, LVP
Cali Bamboo	$7.00 – $8.50/sq.ft.	WPC
Congoleum	$1.90 – $4.00/sq.ft.	LVT, LVP

Cheaper products have vinyl cores – there’s no stone polymer or wood polymer cores that give them greater durability and stability.

Styles and cost ranges

You’ll find mostly wood-look vinyl plank flooring, but it’s manufactured in stone looks, herringbone and metallic looks.

• Wood Look Planks: $2.25 – $12.00 per square foot. It’s the widest cost range because it far-and-away offers the most options from cheap to average to highest cost.
• Stone Look Planks (marble, slate, granite): $2.00 – $8.00 per square foot. That’s a lot cheaper than genuine marble tiles at about $14-$25 a square foot or genuine slate or granite tiles at $11-$20 per square foot will cost you.
• Herringbone Planks: $3.50 – $7.00 per square foot. Save $8-$10 per square foot with vinyl herringbone compared to real wood herringbone flooring.

Vinyl plank flooring cost comparisons

There are many wood-look and genuine wood flooring options. So, it might be useful to compare the cost of vinyl plank flooring alongside the cost to install laminate flooring or a comparable option.

How much does vinyl plank flooring cost compared to laminate? Engineered hardwood or genuine hardwood? Those are common comparisons, and here are the answers.

Material	Low cost	Midrange	High end	Installed cost
Vinyl Plank/SPC/WPC	$1.50 – $3.35	$3.50 – $6.00	$6.25 – $9.00+	$3.75 – $12.00
Sheet Vinyl	$0.50 – $1.15	$1.25 – $2.50	$2.75 – $4.00	$2.25 – $6.50
Laminate	$0.90 – $1.75	$2.00 – $3.35	$3.50 – $5.25	$2.50 – $8.00
Engineered Hardwood	$2.50 – $6.50	$7.00 – $10.00	$10.50 – $15.00	$6.00 – $20.00
Solid Hardwood	$4.00 – $7.75	$8.00 – $11.50	$12.00 – $18.00+	$8.00 – $30.00
Porcelain Tile	$1.50 – $2.25	$2.50 – $3.50	$3.75 – $5.25	$7.00 – $12.50

Installation factors

There are several site conditions that affect the labor cost to install vinyl plank flooring.

Removing old flooring

Carpet and pad are easy to tear out with the right tools or you can bear the cost of professional carpet removal. Click-together laminate and vinyl can be removed quickly too. Perimeter glued vinyl usually leaves damage behind where the adhesive pulls material off the subfloor. The entire subfloor must usually be replaced or covered with fresh material when fully glued flooring or ceramic tile is removed. The cost to remove old flooring and properly dispose of it runs $2.00 to $4.00 per square foot. This is an area you can save money with DIY if you have a convenient way to dispose of the old material.

Wood subfloor repair or replacement

Minor gouges or raised edges caused by water damage can usually be filled or sanded, and the existing subfloor can be reused. While not common, occasionally the subfloor is in very poor condition, and it has to be torn out or at least covered with new material. Expect estimates of up to $1.00 per square foot for repairing the subfloor or substrate. The cost of replacement runs $3.00 to $5.50 per square foot.

Concrete issues

The key to successfully laying vinyl plank flooring over concrete is that the surface must be even and level. If it isn’t, imperfections will probably show through, and those problems can also cause the flooring to come apart and/or to wear unevenly. Preparation includes filling low spots with self-leveling concrete and filling cracks with elastomeric caulk. Repairs might be priced out by the square foot – around $5.00 to $6.00 per square foot for self-leveling concrete. Crack repair generally costs $1-$3 per linear foot depending on the width of the crack and what material is used for the repair.

Vapor barrier

Flooring pros debate whether vapor barrier should be used over concrete. It isn’t essential because vinyl plank flooring is water resistant or waterproof. However, if your installer prefers to put down vapor barrier, and you’re convinced it is necessary, cost starts under 50 cents per square foot for DIY and tops out closer to $2.00 per square foot when the contractor supplies the material and installs it.

Job complexity

When the floor area is wide open and rectangular, any flooring is easier to install. When estimators eyeball a job, they look for narrow areas such as hallways, obstacles like posts or a fireplace hearth, door jambs and other site factors that slow down the installation process. These can raise the cost per square foot for labor.

Volume of flooring

Installation cost per square foot goes down a little as the amount of flooring goes up. For example, the labor cost for installing 60 square feet in a bathroom is generally $3.00 to $4.50 per square foot while laying 500 square feet throughout the house might reduce cost by $1.00 or more per square foot.

Room clearing

Installers love to see empty spaces, but they often have to move furniture in and out of rooms to install the floor. Expect estimates of $25 to $50 per room based on the amount of furniture that must be moved. This cost might appear as a line item on the estimate or it could simply be factored into the installation cost per square foot.

Appliance disconnection

When working in the kitchen, installers might have to disconnect and reconnect gas appliances. This typically costs $20 to $35 per appliance.

Stairs

Installing plank flooring on stairs is a time-consuming task. Most installers charge $45 to $75 per stair.