Flooring on a budget
The cheapest floor to install is not the cheapest floor to own. This page shows both numbers.
For the number on the quote, material and labor together.
This year
For what the floor costs across the years it actually lasts.
Over its life
Ranked by price. Warned by cost per year.
Olefin carpet is the cheapest floor there is and it is ruled out here, because at a durability rating of two it is flattened in the traffic lanes inside five years. Everything that qualifies below will last long enough to be a bargain rather than a repeat purchase, and the second column says which ones are the better deal.
Ranked by the middle of the installed price range, cheapest first, among materials rated at least three for durability; cost per year is that price divided by the middle of the expected life.
$4.00–$6.50 per sq ft installed
The cheapest floor that is not a mistake: polyester carpet is soft, stain-resistant and inexpensive, and in a bedroom it lasts. It crushes in a hallway, which is why it ranks here for the rooms nobody runs through.
$4.50–$7.50 per sq ft installed
The cheapest waterproof floor there is, and a good one: seamless, warm, quiet and mopped clean. It cannot be laid by most homeowners, so the labor line stays, and it is replaced rather than repaired. For a kitchen or bathroom on a budget it is hard to beat.
$5.00–$7.50 per sq ft installed
The cheapest vinyl plank, thin, flexible and glued down. Waterproof and rated for hard traffic, it needs a smooth subfloor and a tidy installer, and it is the budget version of the floor everyone actually wants.
$5.50–$8.00 per sq ft installed
A step up from polyester in wear for a little more money, and inherently stain-resistant. The budget carpet for a hallway or a family room, where polyester would flatten.
Same rule as the picks, run over everything that qualifies. Ties go to the cheaper material.
| Material | Installed / sq ft | Cost per year | Durability | DIY-able | Installed / sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Polyester / PET Carpet | $4–6.5 | $0.62 | $4.00–$6.50 | ||
| 2Sheet Vinyl | $4.5–7.5 | $0.34 | $4.50–$7.50 | ||
| 3Luxury Vinyl Plank — Flexible (Glue-Down) | $5–7.5 | $0.42 | $5.00–$7.50 | ||
| 4Triexta (PTT) Carpet | $5.5–8 | $0.52 | $5.50–$8.00 | ||
| 5Nylon Carpet | $5.5–8.5 | $0.47 | $5.50–$8.50 | ||
| 6Laminate | $5.5–9 | $0.36 | $5.50–$9.00 | ||
| 7Luxury Vinyl Plank — SPC (Rigid Core) | $6–9.5 | $0.38 | $6.00–$9.50 | ||
| 8Luxury Vinyl Plank — WPC (Wood-Plastic Core) | $7–11 | $0.45 | $7.00–$11.00 | ||
| 9Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT) | $7.5–11 | $0.46 | $7.50–$11.00 | ||
| 10Engineered Hardwood | $8–11.5 | $0.27 | $8.00–$11.50 | ||
| 11Epoxy & Resinous Coatings | $7–14.5 | $0.61 | $7.00–$14.50 | ||
| 12Ceramic Tile | $9–15 | $0.32 | $9.00–$15.00 | ||
| 13Wool Carpet | $11.5–18.5 | $0.50 | $11.50–$18.50 | ||
| 14Solid Hardwood | $12.5–19 | $0.21 | $12.50–$19.00 | ||
| 15Porcelain Tile | $13.5–24 | $0.25 | $13.50–$24.00 | ||
| 16Natural Stone | $21–40.5 | $0.41 | $21.00–$40.50 |
Olefin broadloom is the lowest number on any price list and the worst value on it: it mats in the traffic lanes within a few years and holds stains the way polyester does not. The polyester grade beside it costs a few cents more and lasts twice as long in a bedroom.
A 6 mil wear layer is priced like a bargain because it is one, for a guest room. In a kitchen it scratches through in two or three years and the whole floor comes up. A 12 mil plank in a quiet house, 20 mil anywhere busy, is the version that lasts long enough to be cheap.
Laminate and click vinyl exist so that a careful homeowner can lay them, and the labor on a professional quote is often the larger half of the price. Learn the first row on a video; the rest is repetition.
Ceramic tile at a dollar a foot is a real bargain on the material and none at all installed, because tile labor runs five to eleven dollars a square foot regardless of what the tile cost. Tile is the budget floor only for someone who can set it.
A cheap floor over an unprepared subfloor fails early and looks bad immediately, and the money saved on leveling is spent twice on the replacement. Prep is the line to keep.
Sheet vinyl and polyester carpet for a professional installation, at four to six dollars a square foot installed; laminate or click vinyl plank for a self-install, where the material alone can be under three dollars and the labor is a weekend. Peel-and-stick vinyl tile is cheaper still and lasts accordingly.
Sheet vinyl and laminate both come in under six dollars a square foot installed at the midpoint and last fifteen to twenty-five years, which puts them under forty cents a square foot a year. SPC vinyl plank is a dollar or two more and lasts the same, waterproof. Ceramic tile is cheap to buy and lasts decades, but its labor puts it out of this list.
Laminate, by a little, on the box and the same to install if it is a floating click product. Vinyl plank is waterproof and laminate mostly is not, and the sealed-core laminate that is costs about what vinyl does, so the saving is real only in a dry room.
Floating click floors — laminate and rigid vinyl plank — yes, and peel-and-stick vinyl. Not carpet, which needs stretching tools; not sheet vinyl, which needs a seamless cut; not tile or hardwood, which need skills and tools that take a while to acquire. The DIY column in the table is the data’s view of each.
At the low end of the installed ranges — laminate or self-installed vinyl plank in the dry rooms, sheet vinyl in the wet ones, polyester carpet in the bedrooms — a 1,500 square foot house runs roughly five to eight thousand dollars installed, or half that if the click floors are laid by the owner. The costs page has the calculator for a specific plan.
A wide, long, matte, wood-look rigid vinyl plank in a mid-tone with real color variation, laid in a random-length pattern, photographs like engineered oak at a third of the price. Large-format porcelain in a plain neutral does the same for stone, if the labor is within reach.
Each of these ranks every material against one problem, the same way this page does.
Also relevant: Flooring costs and calculator · Laminate flooring