Luxury vinyl plank (LVP) in Woodburn, OR

Luxury vinyl plank, with the wear layer chosen for the traffic rather than the sticker price. It handles claws, spills and dragged furniture, it does not stain the way carpet does, and if a plank is ever badly damaged it can be swapped. We would keep carpet for bedrooms, where it is genuinely nicer to live with.

The opposite. Woodburn gets about 42 inches of rain a year, and that water walks in on shoes. A hard surface at the entry and through the traffic path is far easier to keep than carpet, which holds whatever comes in off the street. What actually matters in a wet climate is the installation — proper acclimation and expansion gaps, so seasonal movement never shows.

The plank is. The floor as a whole depends on the installation and on what is underneath it. Water can still travel through seams and around the perimeter and sit on the subfloor, so a spill wiped up is a non-event while a leak left for a fortnight is not. It handles everyday water far better than laminate or carpet, which is why we put it in kitchens and baths, but it is not a swimming pool.

Sometimes, but we look first. Over a sound, flat, well-bonded surface it can be a good option and it saves the cost of removal. Over old sheet vinyl on swollen particleboard, or anything that is loose or uneven, it just buries a problem that will show through within a year. We tell you which one you have before you decide.

It depends entirely on the house. A quiet couple can be well served by something modest; a family with two dogs and a hallway off the front door should be paying for a thicker one. Rather than quoting a number in the abstract, tell us who lives in the house and how the room is used, and we will point at the right shelf.

Good LVP over a properly flattened subfloor feels solid and is warmer underfoot than tile. The hollow, clicky sound people associate with it almost always comes from a floor floating over dips that were never levelled, or from a missing or unsuitable underlayment. That is an installation problem, not a property of the material.