A floor makes a house loud in two ways. It transmits impact — footsteps and dropped things traveling into the structure and the room below — and it reflects airborne sound, which is why a hard-floored room echoes. Soft floors absorb both, hard floors do neither, and the underlayment under a hard floor closes most of the gap. This page ranks by the sound rating first and says what to put underneath.
Impact noise is the thud of feet and the clatter of a dropped toy going through the floor into the room below. Airborne noise is voices and television bouncing off a hard surface in the same room. Carpet over pad handles both, which is why it tops this ranking; a hard floor handles neither on its own, and an acoustic underlayment under it fixes the first problem and does nothing for the second. Rugs, curtains and upholstery fix the second.
If the question is a neighbor below rather than your own household, the condo page covers the IIC ratings that associations require and how a hard floor meets them. This page is about the house you hear yourself in.
The sound rating counts double and comfort in full, with durability as a tie-breaker; water resistance is shown because the quietest floors are the ones that cannot go in a wet room. Carpet is held to two of the four picks, because its fibers are one decision inside a single choice; the full table below has them all.
$4.00–$9.50 per sq ft installed
Carpet over a good pad absorbs footsteps and voices better than any hard floor with any underlayment under it, and triexta is the residential fiber that stains least and wears well enough for a hallway. The quiet house is a carpeted house upstairs, and this is the carpet to do it with.
$4.00–$10.00 per sq ft installed
As quiet as any carpet over the same pad, and the hardest-wearing fiber for the stairs and corridor where footsteps are loudest. It wants its stain treatment renewed after cleaning, which is the price of the durability.
$5.00–$13.00 per sq ft installed
The quietest hard floor: the foam-composite core and its attached pad damp footfall in a way a stone core cannot, and it is warmer underfoot. Over a rubber or cork acoustic underlayment it approaches carpet for impact noise. It still reflects voices, so it wants rugs in the rooms people talk in.
$9.00–$19.00 per sq ft installed
Wood is quieter than tile or SPC and warmer to walk on, and floated or glued over an acoustic underlayment it makes a civilized upstairs floor. Nailed to the subfloor it drums; the underlayment is what makes the difference.
Same rule as the picks, run over everything that qualifies. Ties go to the cheaper material.
| Material | Sound | Comfort | Durability | Water | Installed / sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Triexta (PTT) Carpet | $4.00–$9.50 | ||||
| 2Nylon Carpet | $4.00–$10.00 | ||||
| 3Wool Carpet | $8.00–$22.00 | ||||
| 4Polyester / PET Carpet | $3.00–$7.50 | ||||
| 5Luxury Vinyl Plank — WPC (Wood-Plastic Core) | $5.00–$13.00 | ||||
| 6Olefin (Polypropylene) Carpet | $2.50–$6.50 | ||||
| 7Engineered Hardwood | $9.00–$19.00 | ||||
| 8Sheet Vinyl | $3.00–$9.00 | ||||
| 9Luxury Vinyl Plank — SPC (Rigid Core) | $4.00–$11.00 | ||||
| 10Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT) | $5.50–$13.00 | ||||
| 11Solid Hardwood | $9.00–$22.00 | ||||
| 12Laminate | $3.50–$11.00 | ||||
| 13Luxury Vinyl Plank — Flexible (Glue-Down) | $3.50–$9.00 | ||||
| 14Epoxy & Resinous Coatings | $3.50–$18.00 | ||||
| 15Porcelain Tile | $8.00–$29.00 | ||||
| 16Natural Stone | $11.00–$50.00 | ||||
| 17Ceramic Tile | $6.00–$18.00 |
A floating SPC floor over 1 mm of foam drums with every step — the hollow layer between plank and subfloor is a soundboard. If the floor is going to be rigid vinyl, the underlayment is the purchase: a dense rubber or cork product, 3 to 6 mm, with a tested rating.
Porcelain over a wood-framed floor is the loudest assembly on this page for the room below and the most echoing for the room it is in. Tile belongs downstairs on a slab or in the wet rooms; upstairs it needs an acoustic mat under the backer board and it will still be the loudest floor in the house.
An acoustic underlayment stops impact noise going through the floor. It does nothing for voices and television bouncing off the surface, which is what makes a hard-floored living room feel loud. That is fixed above the floor: rugs, curtains, a sofa, books.
The house with hard floors in every room is the house where every conversation carries and every footstep upstairs is heard downstairs. Carpet in the bedrooms and the upstairs hall, hard floors downstairs, is the layout most quiet houses actually have.
The pad attached to a rigid plank is a convenience layer, usually 1 to 1.5 mm, and its acoustic contribution is small. Products marketed as quiet plank are an ordinary plank with a thicker pad, and the number to ask for is a laboratory test on an assembly like your floor.
Carpet over a thick pad, by a wide margin, for both footsteps and echo. Among hard floors, cork, then WPC vinyl plank over a rubber acoustic underlayment, then engineered wood over the same. Tile, stone and floating SPC over thin foam are the loudest.
Underneath, an acoustic underlayment — rubber, cork or a rubber-cork blend, 3 to 6 mm, with a tested impact rating — under a floated or glued floor. On top, rugs with a pad in the rooms where people talk and walk. The first fixes what the room below hears; the second fixes what you hear.
Floating rigid plank over a thin pad is, because the hollow layer drums underfoot. WPC is quieter than SPC because its core is foamed, and either over a proper acoustic underlayment is a reasonable upstairs floor. Glue-down vinyl is quieter still because there is no hollow layer at all.
Carpet over a good pad, for the room and for whoever sleeps below it. If it must be hard, WPC vinyl plank or engineered wood over a rubber acoustic underlayment, and a rug beside the bed. Tile and SPC over foam are the ones to avoid up there.
It can be the loudest floor in the house: a hard, thin, floating board over foam clicks and drums with every step. A dense acoustic underlayment instead of the foam that comes in the box changes it more than any other single decision, and a laminate with an attached pad is not the same thing.
Carpet, for the absorption, and the thickest pad the door clearance allows. A hard floor in a media room reflects everything the speakers produce and the room sounds harsh; a rug the size of the seating area recovers most of it if the floor has to stay hard.
Each of these ranks every material against one problem, the same way this page does.
Also relevant: Hard-surface underlayment · Carpet padding