Hotel Flooring in 2026: Why Rigid Core LVT Is Earning Its Place in Hospitality Design

What Architects and Designers Need to Know About Balancing Design Intent, Performance and Specification Risk in Hotel Interiors

Rigid core LVT is increasingly relevant to hotel projects because it allows designers to create the warmth and character associated with timber while answering some very practical hospitality requirements. Waterproof construction, slip resistance, straightforward maintenance and the ability to work within refurbishment programmes can all make it easier to specify confidently across busy hotel environments.

Impervia’s hotel flooring solutions are designed around exactly this balance: keeping the visual language considered and design-led, while making sure the floor can cope with what happens once the hotel actually opens its doors.

There is, of course, a strong case for natural wood in hospitality. Recent design conversations have quite rightly focused on the return to warmer, more tactile and authentic materials. Timber can bring depth, variation and a sense of permanence to a space that is difficult to argue with.

But hotel flooring is rarely a purely aesthetic decision.

Why Are Hotel Flooring Specifications Changing in 2026?

Hotel interiors have become more residential in feel over the past few years. The obvious “contract” aesthetic has softened. Guest rooms feel warmer, reception spaces are more relaxed and restaurants, bars and lounges increasingly need to feel like destinations in their own right.

Flooring is part of that shift.

It covers one of the largest surfaces in an interior, so the choice has a disproportionate effect on how a space feels. Timber tones, herringbone patterns and tactile finishes can immediately make a hotel feel more considered.

Yet the performance expected from that same floor has arguably increased.

A hotel floor may need to deal with:

• Wheeled luggage moving through the same routes every day
• Housekeeping equipment and frequent cleaning
• Furniture being moved or rearranged
• Wet footwear at entrances
• Food and drink spillages in bars and restaurants
• Repeated footfall in bedrooms, corridors and communal areas
• Acoustic requirements between rooms and floors

So instead of asking simply, “Which flooring looks best?”, the more useful specification question is:

Which flooring will give us the design we want while continuing to work in this particular part of the hotel?

That distinction matters because a lobby, bedroom, bar and spa-adjacent corridor do not necessarily present the same flooring brief.

Thinking in this way also moves flooring away from being a surface-level finish and towards being a lifecycle decision. Maintenance, repair, replacement, downtime and future refurbishment all matter.

A material that meets the design brief on opening day but becomes difficult to manage operationally can quickly become an expensive choice.

Why Are Some Hotels Moving Away From Wall-to-Wall Carpet?

Carpet has been part of hotel bedroom design for decades, and for good reason. It feels comfortable underfoot, absorbs sound and helps create the softer environment guests expect from a bedroom.

But there are several reasons why some hotel operators and designers are now looking more closely at hard flooring.

Guest Perception of Cleanliness

Hard flooring has a straightforward visual advantage: its condition can be seen. Dust, marks or spills are visible and can be dealt with directly.

Carpet does not automatically present a hygiene problem, but it can retain dust, debris and residues within the pile. For guests who increasingly associate visibly wipeable surfaces with cleanliness, that difference matters.

Day-to-Day Maintenance

Hotel bedrooms inevitably experience coffee, wine, cosmetics, food, wet luggage and dirty footwear.

On carpet, one localised incident can become a difficult stain. With an appropriate hard floor, many of those issues can be dealt with at surface level without affecting the surrounding area.

Wear Patterns

The route from the entrance to the bed and bathroom is walked repeatedly. Carpet can begin to show those traffic routes over time, particularly in busy properties.

A commercial hard flooring system responds differently to that concentrated use.

A Changing Design Language

Hard flooring also fits naturally with the more residential interiors now appearing across hospitality. Timber-effect planks and herringbone can bring warmth without recreating the traditional hotel-bedroom carpet aesthetic.

The trade-off is acoustics.

Carpet performs extremely well acoustically, so removing it without considering the rest of the room would be an oversimplification.

Impervia incorporates an IXPE acoustic backing within its rigid flooring construction, while selected products have documented impact sound reduction performance.

Designers can also reintroduce softer materials selectively through:

• Upholstered headboards
• Curtains and window treatments
• Loose rugs
• Upholstered seating
• Fabric wall treatments

That can create a useful middle ground: hard flooring where cleaning and durability matter, with softer finishes placed where they contribute most to comfort and sound absorption.

How Can Hotel Flooring Support Cleaner Indoor Air?

Indoor air quality is an important part of hotel flooring specification, particularly in bedrooms and other spaces where guests spend long periods of time.

Carpet can retain dust, house dust mite allergens and other particles within its fibres. Hard, washable flooring such as rigid core LVT provides a surface that can be cleaned more directly.

For Impervia, the key specification credentials include:

• GREENGUARD Gold certification for low chemical emissions
• FloorScore® certification for indoor air quality and VOC emissions
• Formaldehyde-free construction
• A smooth, washable surface that does not allow dust and allergens to become embedded in a carpet pile

FloorScore® certification assesses emissions from hard-surface flooring, including VOCs such as formaldehyde, giving architects and designers independent evidence when indoor air quality forms part of the brief.

Allergy UK also advises reducing carpeting where possible for people affected by house dust mite allergy and using washable floor surfaces instead.

For hotels, this adds another consideration when comparing carpet with rigid core LVT: not just appearance and maintenance, but cleanability, allergen accumulation and verified low-emission performance.

Where Can Natural Wood Create Additional Specification Considerations?

Natural and engineered timber can work extremely well in hospitality. In some projects, the authenticity and ageing characteristics of real wood are central to the design concept.

The issue is not whether timber is suitable for hotels. It clearly can be.

The more useful question is: where does it make the most sense?

Consider four very different hotel environments:

A timber floor may be entirely appropriate in one of those spaces and less straightforward in another.

Moisture is one consideration. Timber products respond differently to water and changing humidity depending on their construction, finish and installation method.

Maintenance is another.

One of the strengths of quality engineered timber is that certain products can be refinished over their lifecycle. But refinishing also means access, labour and programme time.

In an operating hotel, those practicalities matter.

If rooms or public spaces need to be taken out of service, even a technically straightforward repair can carry an operational cost.

Rigid core LVT approaches repair differently. With a suitable locking system, individual boards can potentially be lifted and replaced locally rather than requiring intervention across the complete floor.

Impervia uses push-fit locking systems across its rigid flooring ranges, which can make this particularly relevant to phased refurbishment programmes.

Why Does Rigid Core LVT Work Well in Demanding Hotel Environments?

The appeal of rigid core LVT is that it brings several key performance requirements into a single floor construction.

Impervia flooring combines a rigid composite stone core with an integrated IXPE backing and a commercial-grade surface. Its wood-effect ranges are designed to deliver the visual character of timber alongside waterproof and stain-resistant performance.

That combination matters because hotel floors rarely face a single type of demand.

• In guest rooms: Floors must handle luggage, footwear, frequent cleaning, furniture movement and occasional spills without quickly showing wear.
• In entrances and circulation spaces: Footfall increases, wet footwear is more common, and luggage wheels create concentrated traffic paths.
• In restaurants and bars: Spillages, staining and cleaning demands increase, and slip performance becomes a higher priority.
• In refurbishment projects: Installation speed, floor build-up, existing substrates and minimising disruption can be just as important as surface performance.

What About Slip Resistance?

Slip resistance should always be assessed in relation to real-world use conditions.

The Health and Safety Executive guidance on assessing the slip resistance of flooring highlights the importance of measured performance and appropriate testing rather than relying solely on generic slip-resistance claims.

Impervia’s White Marble flooring, for example, achieved a wet Pendulum Test Value above 45 at Caffè Di Milano, where it was exposed to heavy footfall, food and drink spillages, and a mixed-use restaurant-to-bar environment.

For specifiers, this is far more meaningful than a general suitability claim, as it links performance directly to project risk.

What About Acoustics?

This becomes especially important when replacing carpet.

Hard flooring behaves differently under impact noise from footsteps, luggage and dropped items, so acoustics must be designed into the full floor build-up.

Impervia incorporates an IXPE sound-dampening backing, with selected herringbone products achieving documented impact sound reduction of 21dB.

However, this should always be considered as part of the wider acoustic strategy. The floor, ceiling, partitions, doors and soft furnishings all contribute to the final acoustic environment.

For this reason, moving from carpet to hard flooring should be treated as an acoustic design decision, not simply a material change.

Can Rigid Core LVT Deliver the Same Design Intent as Timber?

There is no need to pretend wood-effect LVT and natural timber are identical.

They are different materials, and they bring different qualities to a project.

Natural timber provides genuine variation and ageing. Rigid core LVT offers greater control over appearance alongside different performance characteristics.

For many hospitality schemes, that control can be useful.

Impervia’s collections include:

• Pale and natural oaks
• White-washed and limed finishes
• Smoked and fumed timber effects
• Contemporary grey tones
• Darker walnut finishes
• Plank and herringbone formats

The format can then be adapted to the space.

• Reception and lounge spaces: Herringbone can add movement and detail.
• Guest rooms: Wider planks can create a calmer, more residential feel.
• Bars and restaurants: Darker or richer timber tones can create more visual depth.
• Contemporary schemes: Pale oak and washed finishes can provide a softer neutral backdrop.

This also matters when a project reaches value engineering.

A floor chosen simply because it “looks like oak” is relatively easy to substitute.

A floor selected because it answers a documented combination of:

• Design intent
• Waterproofing
• Slip resistance
• Acoustic requirements
• Installation constraints
• Maintenance needs
• Commercial wear

is much easier to justify.

That is where performance information starts to protect the design rather than compete with it.

What Should Architects Compare Before Specifying Hotel Flooring?

There is rarely one flooring material that should automatically run throughout an entire hotel.

Different areas require different decisions.

A useful early-stage comparison between rigid core LVT and engineered timber might look like this:

This isn’t here to declare a winner.

However, it should prompt the questions that actually matter:

1. What level of footfall will the area receive?
2. How likely is the floor to become wet or contaminated?
3. How will housekeeping clean and maintain it?
4. What are the project’s acoustic requirements?
5. How easily can the area be taken out of service for repair?
6. What substrate and floor build-up already exist?
7. Could thresholds or finished floor heights create problems?

On refurbishment schemes, those final points can become decisive.

A floor that can be laid over an appropriate existing substrate may help reduce strip-out, but only where the substrate is sufficiently flat, stable and suitable.

Likewise, a locking system can simplify installation, but it does not remove the need for proper subfloor preparation and detailing.

Technical evidence should therefore be reviewed early rather than at the end of the specification process.

That means looking at slip testing, acoustic performance, indoor air quality certification, product construction and installation requirements before the design is fixed.

The Smartest Hotel Flooring Is the One That Fits the Brief

There is no single material that represents the future of hotel flooring.

Natural timber has an important role where authenticity and material character lead the brief. Carpet still offers excellent softness and acoustic absorption. Rigid core LVT brings a different combination of water resistance, maintenance practicality, installation flexibility and wood-effect design.

What is changing is how those materials are being considered.

In guest rooms, some hotel teams are questioning whether wall-to-wall carpet still gives them the best balance of appearance, guest perception, cleaning and long-term maintenance.

In public areas, moisture, footfall and slip resistance may be the bigger concern.

On refurbishment schemes, it may come down to programme, substrate conditions and how much disruption the hotel can realistically absorb.

Rigid core LVT is becoming more relevant because it can answer several of those questions at once.

Not because it should replace timber or carpet everywhere, but because it gives architects and designers another technically credible route to achieving the warm, considered interiors hospitality increasingly demands.

Speak to Impervia about your hotel flooring requirements and explore the finishes, performance credentials and installation options that can support a confident specification from concept through to fit-out. Discuss your project with Impervia.