The Difference Between Waterproof & Water-Resistant Floors

 What Makes Waterproof Flooring Different From Water-Resistant?

Think your home needs “waterproof” floors? We pull back the curtain on marketing claims and show how construction, locking systems, and installation choices matter more than buzzwords. Jason Trim from BPS Southeast explains what truly separates waterproof and water-resistant options, why floods still force tear-outs, and where your money makes the biggest difference.

We start with the basics: how modern water-resistant laminates now handle long-standing spills without swelling, why laminate’s early reputation got torpedoed by thin, cheap boards, and how luxury vinyl rose with a waterproof core before suffering the same cut-rate pitfalls. You’ll hear practical guidance on choosing the right product for kitchens, baths, bedrooms, and basements, plus the real tradeoffs among scratch resistance, comfort underfoot, sound, and price.

Then we go under the surface. Patented click systems from retail flooring stores create tight seams that resist moisture, while DIY-friendly locks often sacrifice water defense for ease. We unpack why steam mops drive vapor into joints, how porous concrete slabs push moisture upward, and why a missing vapor barrier can buckle “waterproof” floors and void warranties. The takeaway is simple: invest in a strong lock, proper subfloor prep, and the right thickness and wear layer for your space.

Whether you’re comparing modern laminate for its scratch resistance and value, or stepping up to luxury vinyl for warmth and quieter steps, this guide helps you avoid the thin-and-brittle trap and buy with confidence. Subscribe, share this with a friend planning a remodel, and leave a review with your toughest flooring question—we might feature it next.

To learn more about BPS Southeast Flooring visit:
https://www.BPSSoutheast.com
BPS Southeast Flooring 
Servicing Rutherford, Polk, Henderson and Cleveland County 
828-532-2141 

Transcript

Welcome And Show Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the BPS Southeast Flooring Podcast, where beautiful spaces start from the ground up. Hosted by Jason Trent, owner of BPS Southeast, serving homeowners, businesses, interior designers, remodelers, and flippers across Western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina. From luxury vinyl and hardwood to carpet and tile, if it goes underfoot, we've got you covered. Expect practical tips, money-saving insights, and the occasional bad dad joint. Because around here, it's flooring for everyone. Let's roll without the bubbles.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Understanding the difference between waterproof and water-resistant flooring can save homeowners major headaches down the road. Welcome everyone. I'm Chelsea Earlywine, co-host and producer here in the studio with Jason Trim, owner of BPS Southeast. Jason, hope your day is going well so far. So far it's going pretty well. All right, Jason. Well, today's question is: what makes waterproof flooring different from water resistant?

How Laminate Lost Then Evolved

Luxury Vinyl’s Rise And Pitfalls

SPEAKER_02 1:05

The most basic concept is waterproof. Technically, you can throw in a swimming pool, nothing's going to happen to it. Water resistant over a period of time, it may absorb some water. But typically, we're not going to be using our flooring as a boat. So that doesn't you really have a big issue with what gets installed. Because a lot of people come in looking for waterproof flooring, which is what they want. It may be what they need. But sometimes water resistant may be just as good and a better option because that's usually a less cost in the product with the same level of durability, sometimes more. So if we take it down to let's start with water resistant flooring, that tends you'll find that more in your laminate products, which when laminate came out, it was a great product. It looks like wood, it was scratch resistant, but it became the product of, oh, this is the best replacement for wood flooring. And then it started getting putting it everywhere, and it wasn't designed to go everywhere. It was designed to go in your heavy living spaces, like your living room, bedroom, hallway, maybe your dining room. And then what happens over time is, oh, it's a great product. Can we get it a little cheaper for them to sell more of it? And they keep trying to get a cheaper product. Well, in making a product cheaper to sell, you cheapen the quality of it. So then you end up with all these homes with okay, it's swelling, it's peeling, it's chipping, and it gets a really bad wrap. So Laminate got really lost a lot of market share. And then when CoreTech came around in 2012, that was waterproof flooring. So it's made of a waterproof core that interlocks together. So it took market share within, I think, four years, Shaw Industries bought it. So now Shaw owns CoreTec. And that became the name everybody knows is waterproof flooring with CoreTech. Then you now have about every flooring company has a form of waterproof flooring now. So they are types of flooring products that you can technically submerge underwater. Nothing's going to happen to them. In the meantime, lamina kind of fades, doesn't fade out, but loses a ton of market share to waterproof flooring because now everybody's got the flooring that it's not going to swell. It's not going to have these problems that lamina has, and it just overruns the market and still has a huge chunk of the market. But what happened with laminate then happened with luxury vinyl. Can we market less? Can we get it cheaper? Is there somewhere to get a lower value so we can sell more of it? Well, same thing happens. It gets thinner, it gets more brittle, it gets other issues start happening where now it got so thin, it didn't stay locked together, it would come apart. You drop something heavy on it, it would chip a corner. The sun would get real hot on it, it would bow and warp. So luxury vinyl in its low-cost values now got a bad market wrap because it had a bunch of issues because they tried to make it cheaper and more affordable. It was never designed to be a cheap and an affordable product. It was to be a value product, so you can get a less expensive version that's not as thick as the real thick ones, but there is a limit of how thin you can go, how small the amount of durability that keeps its quality. So now you have laminate reinsurging as a water-resistant laminate. So what they're doing now is okay, it is made of a similar core now, but that core is almost waterproof, not completely because it's still what it's made of. But it's saying, okay, it may absorb 5% of its weight in moisture if it's submerged, which is very little. It may not even you may not even notice it, but it can't tell you it's 100% waterproof. So it's one of those now. You're getting a somatics of proof to resistance, and it's like, well, if I have a flood, is this gonna hold up? And I'm like, okay, you planning on having a flood? I mean, seriously, you're really thinking you're gonna flood, you may have a flood in your house. Let me explain. If you flood your house, your flooring's coming out, it doesn't matter what you have, because if water gets under either one of them, you have to take the flooring up to dry it out. So it becomes one of those schematics of does it really matter if it's water because I have water resistant floors. You can leave a bucket, put a ring on the floor, seal it to the floor, fill it full of water, and leave it there for a week. It's not going to affect the flooring. It's got like a hundred-plus hour water resistance on the top. An average person is not going to leave a puddle of water on their floor for six days, five days. The water will probably evaporate. So what you're running into is the waterproof has been so marketed to people, you need waterproof. You need waterproof. Yeah, because you screwed up and made a cheap version. You had you found a replacement to fix the problem you created. Then you created another problem. So now they're going back to a different type of luxury vinyl because you cheapened it, so now they're moving back to a more expensive version so it doesn't fail. So the market is people create create the problem because they want to sell more, but then they put a bad taste in everybody's mouth on that product.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, that's interesting. So, Jason, do you think that there are certain rooms in the house where you would recommend either waterproof or water resistant one over the other?

Do Floods Make Waterproof Moot

Room By Room Recommendations

SPEAKER_02 7:07

If you're getting cheap floor, stay away from your bathrooms with cheap flooring. I really don't, it doesn't really matter if it's waterproof or water resistant. If it doesn't stay locked together and it may come apart, you're you're just opening the door for just getting out of the shower. Or your children playing in the sink, playing boats and cars in the sink and splashing water on the floor. I mean, and there's a lot of just basic things. Don't put cheap flooring in areas that it's going to get wet. And kitchens, I would say don't put cheap flooring because that is the heart of the house. It gets the most wear and tear, it gets the most spills, it gets the most things dropped on it. Your pots, pans, cans, glasses, plates, food. I mean, everything and anything that happens happens in a kitchen. So don't at least get a minimum value-based product in a retail store that either spend your money on the most expensive product in a box store, or at least go to a retail store and get a good quality product, it doesn't have to be very expensive, but get a good quality product. Because what's going to happen is you invest money in something, it fails, you lose that investment, and you got to reinvest more money the next time around to get a better product. Instead of saving up a little bit more time and find out a product that will work for your conditions but won't fail. And you're not going to usually find the help at box stores of people that really understand the products. Where you go to a flooring store or retail store, you're getting retail sales associates that they're trained or taught in these rooms, you need to use these products. In these rooms, these products will work. In these rooms, these are not the best products, but these products at this point may work. I mean, my wife worked at Lowe's, so I know how their training courses went. It's not real detailed. It's like watch a video, learn about the products, and then you go on the floor. But there's really no what we call PK meetings, product knowledge meetings. So the sales reps come in to a retail store and they teach the retail sales associates that are on the floor about their product. Then they're available by phone to call them and say, hey, I have a customer that has this situation. Would your product work for this? So you have a lot more knowledge and expertise in the retail side than you do in a box store.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Ah, okay. That's helpful. So, Jason, before we close out, what about installation? Are there differences in how water resistant versus waterproof flooring is installed?

Retail Vs Box Store Expertise

Locking Systems And Steam Mops

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Most of them are click and lock products. But the benefit of a retail location, you will get there's probably, I would say, 10 plus click lock systems that are actually patented. So when you go into a retail store, majority, if not all, are patented locking systems. So they kind of guarantee that once they lock together, water's not going through them. If you see a DYI locking system, that means it's designed for you to easily put it together without much work. That doesn't mean it's going to inhibit moisture from going through it. It just means it's going to be easy to put together. So retail store locations, there's a lot of, there may be a little more challenging putting it together, but when they go together, they don't slide, they don't unlock, things don't go through them. And the benefit of that is as well is a lot of people have gotten sold on the steam mop idea of steam mopping their floors to get the dirt off of. If you get steam in between a joint and it goes under and between the flooring, you're going to have problems because I've tried to explain it. The situation of having a flood, water can get underneath a flooring and you have to pull it up because your subfloor has to dry. Another thing a lot of people are not aware of is they are thinking of, okay, I'm going to put waterproof flooring in a basement because moisture. It's on a concrete slab. You don't know what you're going to run into long term. But concrete is actually a porous substrate. You put enough moisture underneath concrete, it will come through the concrete. So I have seen waterproof wood floors buckle and just bow up because the concrete wasn't sealed with a moisture barrier underneath it. So the benefit of having waterproof flooring is removed because there's water pushing up, trying to get through those lock systems that it won't let anything through. So you're getting all this pressure underneath it, pushing it and destroying your warranty because you didn't do the proper installation part of it. And it doesn't matter if it's waterproof, that moisture is pushing up, so it's going to warp that floor. So the benefit of having a waterproof to water resistant isn't always a factor. Water resistance are tend to be laminates. They're actually more scratch resistant than vinyl. And they cost less. Okay, my waterproof flooring that's the same thickness, with a let's say a 30 milware layer, which is like commercial level, okay, that's$8 a square foot. Big difference in you're getting a similar size plank, both look beautiful, but because one's waterproof, it's eight. This water resistance$550. So in the long run, it may not be worth paying more money if you're looking just for the visual and the durability. There are other factors that make the waterproof orange. It's quieter, it's a little softer to walk on, a little warmer. So there are perks that make it a nicer floor. But sometimes that cost of, I need a good flooring, but water resistant may be just fine for you. You may not have to go to a waterproof because they've improved the technology so much. You may find something you really like that's water resistant.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah. Wow. Well, those are very important distinctions. I appreciate you breaking that all down, Jason. We'll we'll see you on the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Sounds good. That's today's step in the right direction from the BPS Southeast Flooring Podcast. Ready to finally love what you're standing on? Call Jason for a free estimate at 828-532-2141 or visit bpssoutheast.com. Luxury vinyl, hardwood, carpet, tile, flooring for everyone. Thanks for listening. And remember, great rooms don't just happen, they're installed.