Does Luxury Vinyl Stain?

When it comes to low-maintenance, tough-as-nails flooring, luxury vinyl takes the cake!

As we covered in “Three Reasons to Buy Luxury Vinyl,” thanks to its added thickness, vinyl flooring is so strong that it can stand up to even the heaviest-traffic areas of your home. Plus, given that it’s waterproof, it’s almost completely immune to stains!

Indeed, 99% of the time, you have no need to worry about whether or not a liquid will stain your luxury vinyl. But as with pretty much anything, there are exceptions.

UB Hardwoods, your Plymouth provider of floor installation services, has all the details on what doesn’t—and does—stain vinyl below.

What Doesn’t Stain Vinyl?

That’s a massive category, because as far as floorings go, a vinyl floor is pretty much the most stain-proof type out there.

You don’t need to fret about any of the following:

● Water

● Fruit juice

● Mud

● Pretty much any type of surface stain from a foreign substance

This, of course, is provided you clean up stains right away. While you have more leeway with some spills than with others, pigmented liquids will leave their mark on anything if they sit on it long enough. Products intended to dye obviously should be kept off of the floor.

If you’re prudent and on top of tidying up, though, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Rubber-Backed Mats: Vinyl’s Sworn Enemy

It might come as a surprise that the biggest culprit of vinyl stains isn’t accidental spills at all; It’s instead a substance present in a variety of rugs: rubber.

The antioxidants blended with rubber for longevity purposes can react chemically with vinyl flooring, producing ugly yellow blemishes that are extremely difficult to remove. Luckily, preventing these types of stains is easy; just use mats with a different type of backing.

Bottom-Up Staining as the Result of Poor Floor Installation

A popular method of installing vinyl flooring, glue-down installation involves using chemical adhesives to stick the flooring planks to the subfloor. While this method has improved over the years, if your floor installation wasn’t completed correctly, your vinyl can stain from the “bottom up” as a result of water accumulation, adhesive problems, or even mold growth!

Always choose a reputable professional for floor installation to prevent your investment from encountering this near-unfixable problem.