Flooring questions, answered short.

Start with the room and the household, not the showroom. Water, pets, kids, the subfloor and who is installing it rule out more than half the options before looks come into it. The finder asks those eight questions and ranks every home flooring material against your answers.

From about $3 a square foot for carpet or basic laminate to $20 or more for stone, materials and labor together at national averages. Removal, subfloor work, stairs and trim are separate lines. The calculator adds them for your square feet.

Porcelain tile, then rigid-core vinyl plank and laminate for scratch resistance, then hardwood, which dents and scratches but can be refinished. Durability is not one thing: a floor can be hard to scratch and easy to swell.

Rigid-core luxury vinyl plank in most houses: waterproof for accidents, scratch-resistant at 12 mils and up, warmer than tile. Porcelain if the dog is large and the room is hard-used. See the dogs page for the full ranking.

Often, if the old floor is hard, flat and sound: floating vinyl plank and laminate go over tile, sheet vinyl and wood. Never over carpet, never over a floor that is soft or loose, and never so that doors no longer clear.

Laminate has a pressed-wood core that swells in water and a harder, more scratch-resistant surface. Vinyl plank has a plastic or stone-composite core that is waterproof. Same price, same click install; water decides between them.

Yes. A layer of real hardwood on a plywood or fiberboard core. It goes over a slab and in a basement, which solid wood cannot, and moves less in humid air.

A day for carpet or vinyl plank in a few rooms, two or three for a whole house, a week or more for site-finished hardwood or a tiled floor with prep. Removal and subfloor repair add to the front of that.

Click-together vinyl plank and laminate over a flat floor, yes. Tile, nail-down hardwood, stretched carpet and sheet vinyl, no; the labor you are saving is skill, not markup. The DIY page ranks the options.

The product by name and specification (wear layer, veneer, AC rating, fiber), removal and disposal, subfloor preparation, underlayment or membrane, transitions, trim, stairs, and the labor rate, each on its own line. A single square-foot number hides the lines that change.

When you ask for quotes, participating flooring professionals pay to be introduced to you. That is the only revenue. No material and no contractor is ranked for money, and the recommendations are computed from the same ratings whether you request quotes or not.

No. The finder, the results and the calculator ask for nothing. Contact details are asked for once, on the quote form, only if you choose to request local quotes.