The Spruce / Kevin Norris
Vinyl flooring is economical and durable.
Its resistance to moisture is unparalleled by other types of flooring.
The standard tool is to install vinyl flooring onplywood underlayment.
The Spruce / Kevin Norris
What if you already have a flooring covering in place and you don’t want to remove it?
Can you put vinyl flooring over tile or other kinds of floor coverings?
With flooring installation, preparing the correct baseor substrateis critical for a long-lasting, beautiful floor.
It is even more important with thin floor coverings such asvinyl flooring.
When considering whether to refloor, your current floor covering is now the de facto substrate.
So, the same conditions that apply to traditional plywood subfloor apply to this floor covering substrate.
If the wood isheavily gapped, these gaps must first be fixed.
Old solid hardwood can cup or swell over time, too.
This condition would make direct installation over the wood difficult.
Wood flooring of this throw in would need an intervening underlayment.
Vinyl Flooring Over Laminate Flooring
Laminate floor may act as a substrate for vinyl flooring.
Like solid wood flooring, laminate can swell when subjected to water.
Check around the dishwasher, sink, and refrigerator for such areas.
Floating laminate flooring is not attached to the subfloor, so it’s easy to pull up.
Cracked or missing tiles should be fixed or filled in.
Wide seams between the tiles will likely create slight depressions in the vinyl flooring.
Keep in mind that vinyl flooring is thin, soft, and flexible.
Even worse, large holes could cause parts of the vinyl flooring to form craters over time.
This substrate is an addition to thesubfloor.
Sturdy and Solid
Removing floor coverings helps the installer assess thecondition of the subfloor.
Seamless or Tightly Seamed Flooring
Large-format boards provide an installation surface that has few seams.
By contrast, a solid hardwood floor used as a substrate may have hundreds of seams.
Pronounced embossing can eventually telegraph to the surface of the vinyl flooring.
Thin vinyl will quickly pick up on the lower texture and telegraph it to the surface.
Newly pouredconcrete flooring must fully cureand dry out before vinyl flooring is laid on top.
Acceptable Height
Whenever adding one flooring on top of another flooring, height becomes an issue.
If the previous version was presumably an acceptable height, will the higher version be too high?
