Flooring · Luxury vinyl plank
How long does luxury vinyl plank last?
InterNACHI's baseline chart carries one line for vinyl flooring — about 25 years — and does not break the plank format out separately. The plank sells on much longer paper: Mohawk's Pergo Extreme runs a limited lifetime residential term. Read the table that term hangs on and it is really a wear-layer measurement. Twenty mils buys thirty years; twenty-two buys lifetime.
Updated
The gap: the paper says “Lifetime” — The term is printed as a table, not a promise: the 5.0 mm plank with a 20-mil wear layer carries a limited 30-year residential term, and only the 7.0 mm plank with a 22-mil wear layer carries "Limited Lifetime." The same look on a thinner plank is a shorter warranty. Coverage runs to joint integrity, manufacturing defects, staining, pet stains and scratches, waterproofing and wear — with wear defined as the wear layer not wearing through the design layer, so surface scratches and lost gloss are not wear. It applies "only to the original owner and the first installation" and is non-transferable, and it excludes plumbing and appliance leaks, storm and flood, hydrostatic pressure from below, heat and direct sunlight, and any damage traceable to furniture without protective feet. Typical service life is still about 25 years. Warranty document (Pergo (Mohawk), checked 2026-08-27)
Typical service life: about 25 years
The baseline chart carries a single 25-year figure for vinyl flooring; it is a flat estimate for the whole category, not a range for one plank. Take it as the middle of a wide spread — the wear layer above the printed film is the part that wears, and it is sold from about 6 mils in builder-grade goods to 22 mils and beyond.
Tier 3 · baseline chart (undated) Range from InterNACHI — Standard Estimated Life Expectancy Chart for Homes, checked 2026-08-27.
Rigid-core plank is a floating floor, and heat is what moves it. A run under a south-facing slider or over an unshaded sunroom slab can expand enough in an afternoon to peak at the seams, which is why the warranty excludes sun and heat exposure outright and the installation instructions ask for a perimeter gap. Cold matters far less — an unheated vacation house is hard on the joints of a floating floor mainly through the swing, not the low temperature itself.
What the warranty paper actually says
Pergo (Mohawk) (Pergo Extreme rigid vinyl — 7.0 mm plank with a 22-mil wear layer) publishes a “Lifetime” limited, non-transferable, conditional warranty. The term is printed as a table, not a promise: the 5.0 mm plank with a 20-mil wear layer carries a limited 30-year residential term, and only the 7.0 mm plank with a 22-mil wear layer carries "Limited Lifetime." The same look on a thinner plank is a shorter warranty. Coverage runs to joint integrity, manufacturing defects, staining, pet stains and scratches, waterproofing and wear — with wear defined as the wear layer not wearing through the design layer, so surface scratches and lost gloss are not wear. It applies "only to the original owner and the first installation" and is non-transferable, and it excludes plumbing and appliance leaks, storm and flood, hydrostatic pressure from below, heat and direct sunlight, and any damage traceable to furniture without protective feet.
The warranty document itself , checked 2026-08-27.
What shortens it
- A thin wear layer — 6- and 8-mil builder-grade plank is a different product from the 20-mil version of the same pattern, and the warranty tables say so
- Grit carried in on shoes, which is the only thing that meaningfully abrades a wear layer
- Direct sun and trapped heat on a floating floor, excluded by name and enough to expand a run until it gaps or peaks
- Point loads — refrigerator wheels, narrow furniture feet, hard castors — which leave dents a resilient plank does not recover from
- Moisture arriving from below: waterproof is a claim about the plank, not about the slab under it
Signs of wear to look for
- A pale, clouded patch in the traffic lane where the printed film is showing through a thinned wear layer
- Gapping at plank ends, or a floor that has crept away from one wall and tightened hard against another
- Peaking and edge lift along seams on the sunniest run of the house
- Dents that stay dented under appliance wheels and furniture feet
- Click joints that have loosened and give a small snap underfoot at each crossing
Other flooring materials
- Solid hardwood 100+ yrs
- Engineered wood 50+ yrs
- Laminate 15–25 yrs
- Carpet 10+ yrs
- Ceramic and porcelain tile 75+ yrs
- Sheet vinyl about 25 yrs