How the two differ in kind
The two floors people actually shortlist for kitchens and bathrooms could hardly be built more differently. Tile is a masonry system: a rigid finish bonded to a rigid substrate, with adhesive, grout and — in wet rooms — a waterproofing layer under it that does the real sealing. LVP is a floating plastic plank that clicks together and touches nothing: it lies on the subfloor under its own weight and moves as one sheet with the seasons.
That structural difference drives almost every practical one. Tile transmits what is under it and punishes a bad substrate; a floor that flexes cracks grout lines first and tiles second. LVP bridges minor sins in the subfloor and forgives them. Tile is repaired by cutting out a piece of masonry; LVP is unclicked back to the damaged plank and reclicked.
Neither is 'the waterproof one' by itself. Grout is not waterproof — wet-area tile relies on the membrane beneath. Most LVP is itself waterproof as a material, but water that reaches its edges finds the subfloor anyway. The honest wet-room answer for both is the same: the layer under the finish does the protecting.
The factors that actually differ
Show
| Luxury vinyl plank | Ceramic / porcelain tile | |
|---|---|---|
| Substrate demands | Tolerant. Bridges small dips and minor flex; needs flat, not perfect. | Strict. Rigid, flat and stiff or the grout cracks — deflection is the enemy. |
| Installation labour | Click-together, dust-free, a room in a day; the offcut from one row starts the next. | Adhesive, cuts with a wet saw, grouting the day after; the slowest floor per square metre most DIYers ever lay. |
| Underfoot | Warmer and slightly resilient; kinder to dropped crockery and standing cooks. | Hard and cold unless heated — but the ONLY one of the two that loves underfloor heating. |
| Heat and sun | Softens and can fade in hot direct sun; conservatory floors are its weak spot. | Indifferent to heat; the default over underfloor heating and in sunrooms. |
| Damage and repair | Scratches and dents from furniture points; repair = unclick back to the plank. | Chips on hard impact; repair = grind out one tile — keep a spare box from the same batch. |
| Lifespan character | A finish with a service life; expect to replace it eventually, easily. | A building element; outlives the kitchen around it when laid on a sound base. |
| Impact noise | Quieter underfoot and a much smaller impact transmission into the room below, particularly with an acoustic underlay. | The noisiest common floor. In an apartment with an impact rating to meet, tile needs a designed acoustic layer beneath it, and that layer changes the build-up height. |
| Moisture from below | Effectively a vapour barrier. On a slab with no damp-proof membrane, moisture accumulates beneath it with nowhere to go — a genuine failure rather than a theoretical one. | Far more tolerant. A cementitious bed and grout let a slab breathe, which is why tile survives on floors that destroy impermeable coverings. |
| Over underfloor heating | Adds its own thermal resistance plus whatever underlay it needs, which reduces the floor's output and may need a higher water temperature. | Nearly transparent thermally, which is why it is the default over a heated floor. |
| Batch variation | Printed, so the pattern repeats. Boxes are mixed across the floor so the repeat does not line up visibly. | Fired, so shade genuinely varies between production batches. Order the whole job at once and keep a spare box from the same batch for repairs. |
Which one, and when
Choose luxury vinyl plank when…
- The subfloor is imperfect and you are not rebuilding it.
- Speed matters — the room must be back in service tomorrow.
- Comfort underfoot and quiet matter more than permanence.
- You expect to refresh the look within a decade anyway.
Choose ceramic / porcelain tile when…
- Underfloor heating is in the plan — tile is its natural partner.
- The room is genuinely wet and you are doing the membrane properly.
- You want the floor to be the last one this room gets.
- Strong sun or high heat rules out vinyl's soft spot.
Now run your own numbers
This page holds no prices on purpose — a national average is wrong for almost every real project. Quantify both options with your dimensions and your local quotes.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is cheaper?
- Structurally different answers, which is why this site refuses a per-square figure. LVP is usually cheaper INSTALLED because the labour is a fraction of tiling's, even where the materials cost similar money. Tile's cost is dominated by labour and preparation; a bad substrate can double the preparation before a tile goes down. Run both calculators with your own quotes — the material quantity arithmetic is the easy half.
- Can I lay LVP over old tile?
- Often, and it is one of its best tricks — if the tile is solid and the grout lines are shallow enough not to telegraph through. Deep joints need a skim of leveller first. Tile over old tile is also possible but adds real height and demands the old bed be sound; two masonry layers on a moving substrate crack together.
- Which adds more resale value?
- Tile reads as permanent and LVP as a finish, and buyers respond accordingly in kitchens and bathrooms. But a crisp new LVP floor beats tired tile every time. Condition beats material; do not tile badly for the valuation.
- Will LVP work over underfloor heating?
- Usually, within two limits that both need checking rather than assuming. The first is the maximum floor surface temperature the manufacturer permits, which is lower for vinyl than for tile and which the heating design has to respect — exceeding it is what causes planks to expand, buckle and separate at the joints. The second is thermal resistance: the plank and any underlay sit between the pipe and the room, and their combined resistance reduces the floor's output for a given water temperature. On a well-insulated room that is fine; on a room whose heat loss already needs most of what a floor can deliver, it can be the difference between adequate and not. Decide the covering before the heating is designed rather than after.
- Why is my LVP lifting at the edges?
- Almost certainly because it has been pinned. A floating floor expands and contracts as one sheet with temperature and humidity, and it needs a continuous EXPANSION GAP at every perimeter and around every fixed object — pipes, door frames, thresholds, kitchen units. Any point where the floor is trapped becomes a fixed point the rest of the floor pushes against, and the buckle appears wherever it can lift. The commonest culprits are a threshold bar screwed through the planks, a kitchen unit or a heavy appliance sitting on top of the floor rather than on the subfloor, and a skirting fixed down onto the plank instead of clear above it. The remedy is to find and release the restraint, not to weigh the buckle down.
- Do I need a damp-proof membrane under LVP on a concrete slab?
- Yes, unless the slab demonstrably has an effective one already — and this is where impermeable floor coverings fail. Moisture moving up through a slab passes freely through a breathable finish and accumulates under an impermeable one, where it lifts the adhesive, degrades the backing and produces the smell and the edge-curl that get blamed on the product. The test is the same one screeds are judged by: an in-situ relative humidity probe or a hygrometer box, read against the covering manufacturer's limit. Where the reading is too high, the route is a surface damp-proof membrane specified for the purpose rather than a sheet of polythene loose-laid.
- How do I stop tiles and grout cracking?
- By controlling deflection and by letting the floor move where it needs to. Tile is a rigid finish on a rigid bed, and it cracks when the substrate flexes under it — which is why tiling standards set a deflection limit far tighter than a structural one, commonly around span over three hundred and sixty for ceramic and twice that for natural stone. Meeting it may mean adding a joist, reducing the span or adding a second layer of board. The second mechanism is restraint: a large tiled area expands and contracts, and without perimeter and intermediate movement joints it fails at its weakest line, which is the grout. An uncoupling membrane addresses both at once by letting the tile bed move independently of the substrate, and on a floor with any doubt about either it is the cheapest insurance available.