A buying guide to luxury vinyl tiles

What LVT actually is

Luxury vinyl tiles, usually shortened to LVT, are rigid planks or tiles that click or glue together to build a real wood or stone look floor. Unlike sheet vinyl, LVT is not cut from a continuous roll, so there is no seam to plan around, only a pattern of individual planks or tiles.

Packs, not rolls

LVT is boxed into fixed-size packs. Your floor area plus a waste allowance is rounded up to the next whole pack, because a part-pack still means buying the full box. That is a different maths from carpet and vinyl, and every range page shows exactly how many packs your room needs.

Wear layer and where to use it

The wear layer is the clear protective coating on top of the printed or stone-effect surface. A thicker wear layer, shown in millimetres in the specification table, generally holds up longer under heavy foot traffic, which matters more in a busy kitchen or hallway than a spare bedroom.

What the home measure adds

The home measure checks the subfloor is flat and sound, since LVT shows through small imperfections more readily than carpet, and confirms the exact pack count and price before anything is booked.