When selecting bathroom flooring, you probably want to ask yourself. Is it durable? Will it stand up to the kids? Does it look nice or shoddy? How does it feel under bare feet.

Let’s look at your top bathroom flooring options. We’re counting down, from worst to best:

7. Carpet
A horribly bad choice for bathroom flooring. Moisture and carpeting do not mix. However, if you still must have carpeting in your bathroom, we have pointers from a professional carpet installer

6. Solid Hardwood
A slightly better bathroom flooring choice than carpet, solid hardwood looks great and feels warm under foot. But moisture kills solid hardwood. Make certain it’s perfectly installed, with no gaps for moisture. This likely means hiring installers–unless your day job happens to be that of a hardwood floor installer.  Check out our Hardwood information

5. Laminate Flooring
Surprisingly, laminate flooring is a better bathroom flooring choice than solid hardwood. I say “surprisingly” because laminate flooring is no more than resin-impregnated paper atop a wood chip base. The surface of laminate plank is actually a photograph of whatever it’s supposed to be simulating: oak, cherry, slate, marble. On top of that is what the manufacturers call the “wear layer.” The wear layer is a clear layer of melamine. But this wear layer is amazingly strong. Many times you’ll see manufacturer’s warrants the wear layer on its line of laminate flooring for 30 years. Because the seams are glued together, it’s difficult for moisture to work its way downward. Laminate is easy to clean, too. But laminate still has that wood chip base, and should it happen to contact with moisture it will expand and bubble and the only way to fix it is to tear it out.   Check out our selection of Laminate Flooring for Bathrooms

4. Engineered Wood
Engineered wood is great stuff. It’s got a plywood base that holds up well against moisture. And it looks terrific because the top layer is real wood. If you want the wood flooring look in a bathroom, engineered wood is the best choice.  Check out our Hardwood information

3. Stone
No moisture problems with marble, granite, limestone, and the other stone flooring options. Stone is mid-level is this list and not at the top because of a number of issues. The first one is that it’s cold. The second issue: it tends to be slippery. This can be solved by having the stone textured by sandblasting or buy purchasing naturally textured stone, such as slate. But the main issue that pulls this bathroom flooring option down, in my opinion, is cost. Stone flooring is by far your most expensive flooring option.

2. Sheet or Tile Vinyl
Vinyl is the most popular choice for bathroom flooring for several reasons. Vinyl is very much a do-it-yourself job (you can install vinyl tiles in a weekend, easily). And there are thousands of style options.

Sheet or tile vinyl flooring are your two options within this category. One downside of the vinyl tiles is that, after awhile, they tend to come up. Sheet vinyl is the solution to that, but sheet vinyl is difficult to install for the home remodeler. The main reason vinyl occupies the #2 spot is that it’s cheap. But the reason it’s not #1 is that, well, it’s vinyl. No matter how fancy the style and texturing, it still looks and feels like vinyl.

1. Ceramic Tile
Ceramic tile is the best of all worlds. Like stone, it’s got a rich, textured, solid feeling. Like vinyl, it’s waterproof and it’s fairly inexpensive. And like wood flooring, it looks pretty good. There are so many different types of ceramic tiles, you can get exactly the floor you want. You can even find ceramic tile that looks like stone. It comes in sizes between 4″x4″ to 2′x2′, and comes in a wide variety of shapes such as octagonal and hexagonal. Mosaic tiles come in pre-mounted plastic mesh sheets, so you don’t have to individually set each tile. With tinted grout, you can be even more creative. It cleans up well and bravely resists even standing pools of water. Downsides: like stone, it’s cold (though radiant or heated tile is available. Also, it can be slippery. But texturing solves that problem. Smaller tiles are less slippery, because more grout is used and the grout acts as a non-skid surface.

Check out our Ceramic selections