Plywood Under Vinyl Flooring

If you ve chosen luxury vinyl plank flooring as a replacement for your current flooring you ve made a very smart choice.

Plywood under vinyl flooring.

Vinyl flooring is usually not installed directly over the subfloor in residential applications. The finished floor is then installed on top of the subfloor. What size plywood do i use for a subfloor. Some professionals however will use plywood as thin as 1 4 inch for resilient flooring if the subfloor is in particularly good condition.

It s extremely beautiful flooring that mimics natural hardwood and sometimes even stone. Most underlayment approved plywood is at least 11 32 inches the standard recommendation. While underlayment for vinyl planks may be used under hardwood and laminate the reverse is not true. This means that over time it will conform to the shape of the floor beneath.

In most cases 4 by 8 foot sheets of particle board or plywood must be installed in preparation for the vinyl floor install. There is usually no appreciable difference in the performance characteristics of plywood or osb subfloors. The subfloor is the decking installed on top of flooring joists. Vinyl planks require hard thin underlay because the product itself is softer.

It can also be used under hardwood laminate and carpet but this is much less common these days because subflooring is typically smooth enough for these materials many of which are installed with a different type of underlayment or pad. Under some circumstances osb may flex underfoot when installed under carpet or vinyl flooring. One of the big considerations when installing different types of flooring in the home is getting the finished elevations to. The thickness of plywood.

Plywood underlayment is a thin plywood material that is most commonly used under resilient flooring materials such as vinyl and linoleum sheets and tiles. This means you want the sub floor to be as smooth as possible. Vinyl isn t very thick and it is quite plastic. A final mark to check is the thickness of the plywood.

This means that you will see grooves in the vinyl where there are gaps between the plywood sheets.