Vinyl Performance
The wear layer is critical to the performance of a vinyl floor. The thickness of the wear layer varies with each manufacturer's collection or series and is generally measured in mils. The thickness of a mil is about the same as a page in your telephone book. So a 10 mil wear layer would be comparable in thickness to about 10 pages in your telephone book.
The more expensive vinyl floors generally will have a thicker wear layer and a much better finish. How long your vinyl floor will look new is based on the wear layer’s performance. Performance characteristics for vinyl are:
• Easy to clean
• Stays looking like-new
• Resists staining from normal household products
• Doesn't show scratches easily
• Resistance to tearing, gouging, ripping and indentations
Ease of cleaning relates to how difficult it is to remove soiling and other marks from a floor's surface. When a floor begins to look old and dull it is usually caused by hundreds of fine hair-line scratches in the wear layer. The fine scratches come from dirt, grit, and sand rubbing on the wear layer's surface.
The new, high-end vinyl floors have better technology to help resist showing wear and staining far better than any of the middle to low-end vinyl floors made today. The special urethane finishes used on today's residential, high-end vinyl floors will give you a richer looking floor, better designs, better tear-resistance and much better performance.