In 2026 you can walk into Home Depot and buy “wood-look” vinyl plank for less than a quarter of what real hardwood costs installed. It looks shockingly close to the real thing in photos. It’s waterproof, scratch-resistant, and a weekend DIY install away from being underfoot.

So why does anyone still install real hardwood?

We’ve been laying and refinishing hardwood floors in Los Angeles since 1984. Hardwood is our craft, but we’re not going to pretend vinyl and laminate don’t have a place. They do. The honest answer to “should I install real hardwood?” is that it depends on your home, your timeline, and what you actually want from a floor.

Here’s how we think about it on every estimate.

What you’re actually buying

This is the part nobody explains clearly when you walk into a flooring store. The four options on the wall look similar in a 6”x6” sample, but they’re wildly different products underneath.

Solid hardwood is real wood, top to bottom. Each plank is one piece of oak, maple, walnut, or whatever species you chose, typically ¾” thick. You can sand it down and refinish it essentially indefinitely, every decade or two depending on use, and each refinish takes the floor back to new. Solid hardwood floors over 100 years old are common in LA’s older neighborhoods, still in service, still beautiful.

Engineered hardwood is a real wood veneer (the top 2 to 6mm) bonded to a plywood core. It’s still a real wood floor when you look at it, walk on it, or refinish it. The plywood core makes it more dimensionally stable, which matters over concrete slabs or in homes with humidity swings. A good engineered floor with a thick top layer can be refinished one or two times in its life.

Laminate is a high-resolution photograph of wood, sealed under a melamine wear layer, laid over fiberboard. The visible surface is a printed image of wood grain. The substrate is particle board. It cannot be refinished, so once the surface scratches through or dulls, the floor is done. Water is its enemy; a single bad spill can swell the fiberboard core and ruin a plank.

LVP, short for luxury vinyl plank, is plastic top to bottom. A printed vinyl wear layer sits over a rigid PVC core, shaped and colored to look like wood. The good ones look impressively realistic, and they’re waterproof, scratch-resistant, and forgiving of subfloor imperfections. They also can’t be refinished. Once the surface wears down, the floor gets replaced.

The visual gap between these has narrowed a lot in 10 years. The structural gap has not.

You buy LVP many times. You buy hardwood once.

The cost-over-time math is the part people miss when they’re staring at the per-foot price at the store.

LVP and laminate have an end. After roughly a decade of use, sometimes longer with light traffic, the surface wears out and the floor gets pulled up, hauled away, and replaced.

A real hardwood floor doesn’t have an end. It has refinishes. When it gets dull or scratched, we sand it down to fresh wood and put new finish on top. Same floor, brand new again, for a fraction of what a full replacement costs. Then another long stretch before the next one.

We had a customer in Hidden Hills who Rami installed solid hardwood for in the 80s. They loved the floor and kept his business card. Twenty years later they called him back about that same floor. They wanted to know if he could come refinish it. Same wood. Same install. Just bringing it back to life.

Real hardwood floors are something you maintain over the years. Vinyl and laminate floors are something you replace every decade or so.

We don’t quote per-square-foot pricing online because it varies too much from job to job. The long-term math almost always favors real wood when the homeowner plans to stay. If you want real numbers for your home, we do free estimates.

Where vinyl or laminate is actually the right call

We say this on estimates all the time, and it’s true: sometimes vinyl or laminate is the smart choice.

In bathrooms, laundry rooms, and other rooms with standing water risk, real hardwood is a bad fit. Waterproof LVP earns its keep in those spaces.

In rentals, where the floor is going to take ten years of rough use from tenants you don’t know, LVP is more forgiving and easier to replace.

For short-term flips, if you’re selling in two years and the buyer pool is price-sensitive, LVP gets you a clean look without the install cost of real wood.

Tight budgets where the alternative is staying with damaged carpet make LVP a sensible move. A new vinyl floor beats an unsalvageable old one.

Concrete slab basements with moisture history aren’t a place for real hardwood. Most LA homes don’t have basements, but if yours does, this matters.

If your situation fits one of these, we’ll tell you. We’d rather be honest than sell you a floor you don’t need.

Where real hardwood still wins

For everywhere else, the rooms you actually live in and the home you plan to keep, real wood is still the answer.

“Hardwood is timeless, has a real feel to it, and looks beautiful.”

Rami says that at every estimate. It’s true in a way that’s hard to articulate until you’ve stood barefoot on a real oak floor in a quiet living room.

Wood feels right underfoot. There’s a slight give and a warmth that plastic doesn’t replicate. You notice it without being able to name it. It also sounds right; walk across LVP and walk across solid oak and the acoustic difference is immediate. Plastic floors have a hollow tap. Real wood has weight.

Real hardwood ages well. A floor that’s been on the ground for decades develops character. Sun fades near windows. Boards wear at doorways. That’s how real wood ages, and it’s part of why people love it. Vinyl and laminate either look new or they look broken, with no graceful middle.

Hardwood is also repairable. A damaged board can be cut out and replaced. The new piece blends in with the next refinish. Damage to LVP and laminate is permanent.

And in LA’s premium neighborhoods, real hardwood is what buyers expect. A house with original hardwood is a stronger listing than the same house with LVP, sometimes by a noticeable margin.

The Los Angeles factor

This is where our local angle matters. LA has a lot of housing stock from the 1920s through 1940s. Most of those craftsman bungalows and Spanish revivals were built with original solid oak (sometimes maple) floors.

A lot of those original floors are still under the carpet you might be standing on right now.

The conversation we have all the time goes like this: a homeowner is convinced their old floors are too far gone and wants to put LVP on top of everything. We pull back a corner of the carpet, look at what’s underneath, and most of the time the answer is that the floor is salvageable. A refinish, sometimes a refinish plus a few board replacements, restores something that’s been there for 90 years and will be there for another 90.

The math is almost always in favor of refinishing original wood instead of replacing it. The result looks better, costs less in the long run, and respects what the house already has.

Putting LVP over original hardwood in a 1928 home is the move that hurts to see. Most of the time it isn’t necessary.

How to actually decide

When someone asks us “hardwood or LVP?” we ask back:

How long will you own the home? Under 5 years and selling to a price-sensitive buyer, LVP is fine. 10 or more years, or staying for good, real wood pays for itself.
Is there existing hardwood under your current floors? If yes, refinishing is almost always the right answer. A 90-year-old oak floor brought back to life beats anything you can buy new.
Which rooms? Wet rooms (bathrooms, laundry) want LVP. Living spaces and bedrooms want hardwood.
What do you actually want from a floor? Some people want a surface that does its job and disappears, which is what LVP delivers. Some people want a floor that becomes part of the home, which is what hardwood does.

Every home has its own right answer.

We’d rather tell you the truth than sell you a floor

If you’re in Los Angeles and weighing real hardwood against LVP, laminate, or engineered, we’ll come out and look. Free estimate, no pressure. We’ll tell you honestly which option makes sense for your home, including telling you to skip us and go with vinyl if that’s the right call for your situation.

Get in touch for a free estimate.

We’ve been doing this since 1984. The floors we installed in the 80s are still in service. A lot of them are due for their second refinish. The owners are happy with the work, and they call us back when they need more.