LVT Vinyl Flooring in Leeds

Armley, Highbury and the Leeds back-to-back

The Armley conservation area appraisal gives an estimate of 4,700 back-to-back houses and 1,800 through-terrace houses built in Armley between 1861 and 1932. The Far Headingley appraisal records high-density but good-quality back-to-back and terraced housing in the Highbury area in the 1880s, and the Mabgate appraisal notes that Leeds City Council went on building an updated back-to-back until the type was finally banned in 1937.

Which rooms get wet, and how much grit comes through the door, has as much to do with the house as with the household. Where a terrace door opens from the street straight into the living room, that room takes the grit a hall would otherwise catch, and it needs the harder wear layer as much as the kitchen needs a floor that takes on no water.

Lets, spare rooms and bigger houses: matching the wear layer

Rented homes are a large part of Leeds: 26.0% of households rent privately and 25.2% from a council or housing association, against 20.3% and 17.1% for England and Wales. The rentals guide's rule for landlords is short: LVT in anything that can get wet, laminate only in the dry rooms. For most lets it names rigid-core vinyl as the strongest answer.

Wear layers should follow the room. 29.1% of Leeds households have at least two bedrooms more than they need, below the 35.9% for England and Wales. A commercial wear layer in a spare bedroom buys nothing; it belongs in the hall.

In a larger house the same thinking covers the whole plan. 12.2% of Leeds dwellings have four or more bedrooms, against 16.1% for England and Wales. Where one does, the guide puts LVT in the wet rooms and the hall and keeps laminate for the dry rooms upstairs.

Wet shoes in a Leeds hall and water at the joints

Leeds sees 14.5 days a year of heavy rain in the Met Office's 1991 to 2020 average, fewer than the median of 17.8 across the 151 towns and 120th of them. It is still the hall that meets wet shoes and grit together, and the guide's answer there is LVT with the wear layer specified up.

Water that stands is a different matter. 11.8% of homes in the Leeds local authority are in areas at some risk of surface water flooding, below England's 14.3%. The planks do not take on water, but no floor installation keeps water out: it can still reach the subfloor through the joints and the gap left around the edge of the room.