Buy an older Toronto or GTA house and you often inherit a floor you did not choose, with no paperwork and no spare plank in the basement. You can still work out what sits under your feet without pulling anything up. A cut edge at a floor vent, the way the boards are fixed down, and the code printed on the back of a plank settle almost every case, and they are also a quick route if you want to know how to tell laminate from vinyl on a floor you already own. Knowing which of the four floors you have decides whether it can be sanded and what it costs to take it out. If the answer turns out to be vinyl plank, our vinyl flooring collection is the place to compare current colours and prices.
Quick answer: what kind of floor do I have?
- Solid hardwood: one piece of wood through the whole thickness, usually nailed or stapled down, and it can be sanded more than once.
- Engineered hardwood: a real wood top layer bonded to a multi-layer core, usually nailed down, and sandable fewer times than solid wood.
- Laminate: a printed image on a wood-fibre core, click-locked and floating.
- Vinyl plank (LVP or SPC): a plastic core under a printed layer, click-locked and floating, and the Riche plank in our table is 8mm with a 20mil wear layer.
Two of those answers are wood, and the other two are a picture of wood. Nails and staples point to wood rather than to laminate or vinyl plank. A floor that floats and clicks is usually laminate or vinyl plank, and the layer underneath the surface tells you which one.
The four floors and the specs that give them away
Each example below is a floor we stock, and each is built differently. Price per square foot is box price divided by the coverage in the box, so a laminate box and a solid wood box compare fairly.
| Floor type | Example product | Box price and coverage | Price per sq ft | Specs that give it away |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laminate | Egger EM7200, made in Germany | $42.63 per 21.42 sq ft box | $1.99 | 8mm, 7.60" wide, click-lock |
| Vinyl plank (SPC) | Riche Heavy-Duty Golden Prairie | $59.00 per 16.55 sq ft box | $3.56 | 8mm, 20mil wear layer, click-lock |
| Engineered hardwood | Havana European Oak, character grade | $97.00 per 19.42 sq ft box | $4.99 | 7 1/2" wide, 19mm, 3mm oak top layer, nail-down |
| Solid hardwood | Appalachian Safari Red Oak, prestige grade | $113.21 per 18.9 sq ft box | $5.99 | 4 1/4" wide, 19mm, nail-down |
Prices checked October 7, 2026. Box prices and coverage come from our current catalogue, and the per-square-foot figures are box price divided by box coverage.
Read the table as a set of fingerprints: two rows are wood through and through, one is wood fibre with a picture on it, and one is plastic.
Check 1: look at a cut edge before you lift anything
Every floor has at least one spot where its edge is already visible. Lift a floor vent register, pop off a door threshold, or look at the gap beside a baseboard that has been pulled. A torch held low shows the layers clearly.
Solid hardwood is wood the whole way through
The National Wood Flooring Association describes solid wood flooring as one piece of wood from top to bottom. At a cut edge under a threshold you should see grain running through the full thickness, with nothing glued on top and no core behind it.
Engineered hardwood has a wood surface over a core
This is the check that catches people out, because an engineered board is still a real wood floor and often looks identical from above. The same association describes engineered floors as also made of real wood, but with multiple layers, and the top layer made of high-quality wood. At a cut edge you see a thin slice of wood sitting on a stack of glued layers. On the Havana plank we stock that slice is a 3mm European oak top layer over a 19mm plank, and the top layer is the real wood surface.
Laminate and vinyl plank can be the hardest pair to separate
From standing height these two look nearly the same, because both print their wood pattern onto a surface layer. Go by the core instead. Tarkett describes a laminate core board as high-density fibreboard from more than 80% wood. Rigid vinyl planks belong to their own standard: the ASTM specification for resilient flooring with a rigid polymeric core covers products that are surface decorated or printed and protected by a clear wear layer, built on a polymeric rigid core. Wood fibre against plastic is the difference you can see at the edge.
Check 2: see how the planks are fixed down
Fixings separate wood from the floating floors quickly, and they are easy to overlook when you are looking at a floor from above.
Nails and staples mean wood
Tilt a torch across the boards and look for a line of small filled holes, or a row of nail heads where a plank meets the wall. Nails or staples driven into a wood subfloor point to solid or engineered hardwood rather than laminate or vinyl plank. Both wood floors above are listed as nail-down. Glue lines around the edge of each board are a separate case: the floor is glued rather than nailed, and removal is priced after viewing because the method changes the work.
A floating floor clicks and moves
Press down hard on one plank and watch the joints around it. On a floating floor, a joint will open slightly and the surface shifts as a sheet; on a nailed floor nothing moves. That floating, clicking behaviour is the signature of laminate or vinyl plank, which is how both of those rows are listed.
Check 3: read any code printed on the back of a plank
The product itself is the most reliable record, and the back of a plank is often readable without removing it. Pull back the carpet edge at a doorway, slide out a floor vent, or turn over a spare plank if the previous owner left one. Where a collection name, a brand or a product code is printed on the core, that label settles the question on the spot.
If you find a spare plank, keep it. A matching board is what makes a single-plank repair possible later.
Check 4: width is a weak clue, and our own range shows why
One common shortcut says narrow planks are laminate or vinyl and wide planks are wood. Our catalogue disproves it. The Riche SPC vinyl plank is 7.09" wide, the Havana engineered oak is 7 1/2" wide, and the Egger laminate is 7.60" wide, so three materials share almost the same width. The only solid floor here is the narrowest of the four at 4 1/4". Plank width can be a hint, but it should not decide on its own.
What the answer changes: sanding, repair and removal
The type of floor decides which repairs are possible at all. One of the many benefits of solid wood flooring, as the association puts it, is that it can be sanded and refinished many times, while an engineered floor can be sanded and refinished too, but not as many times. Laminate and vinyl plank sit in a different category, because neither has a thick wood surface to remove: the top layer is a printed pattern and a wear layer, so a deep gouge is usually handled by replacing boards. Compare the two routes in our guide to refinishing versus replacing hardwood in Toronto.
Removal is priced by what is coming out, and the difference between a floating click floor and a nailed wood floor shows up on the first line of a quote.
| Old floor | House or basement | Condo |
|---|---|---|
| Floating laminate (click) | $1.30 per sq ft | $1.60 per sq ft |
| Floating vinyl plank (click) | $1.30 per sq ft | $1.60 per sq ft |
| Nailed hardwood | $1.50 per sq ft | priced after viewing |
| Nailed engineered hardwood | $1.50 per sq ft | priced after viewing |
| Glued flooring or tile | priced after viewing | priced after viewing |
The arithmetic is short once you have the right line. On 600 sq ft of floating laminate or click vinyl, removal is 600 x $1.30, which is $780.00 before tax and $881.40 with 13% HST. The same area of nailed hardwood or nailed engineered comes to 600 x $1.50, or $900.00 before tax and $1,017.00 with HST, so the floor type alone moves that one line by $120.00. A condo is higher again for the two floating floors. The flooring removal costs by floor type guide breaks the same rates down room by room.
Removal is quoted on the original floor area with no waste allowance. Installation, delivery, trim and any subfloor repair are separate lines, confirmed against your measurements and photos at quote time rather than folded into the tear-out figure.
When you are ready to choose the floor that replaces it, the wider differences between the four materials are covered in our wider flooring comparison for Toronto homes, and the two wood categories are set side by side in solid hardwood compared with engineered hardwood. If the floor you identified is vinyl plank, how vinyl plank flooring is built explains the layers in more detail.
Frequently asked questions about a floor you did not choose
How can I tell laminate from vinyl plank without damaging the floor?
Look at a cut edge that is already visible, at a floor vent or a threshold, and check what the core is made of. A wood-fibre core points to laminate and a plastic core points to vinyl plank.
Do I have LVP or laminate in a basement?
Basements are where the material turns up most often, because a floating click floor is usually why the basement was finished at all. Do the edge check, then press a plank to see whether the surface moves as a sheet. A wood-fibre core makes it laminate, and a plastic core makes it vinyl plank.
How do I know if my wood floor is engineered rather than solid?
Count the layers at a cut edge. Wood the whole way through is solid, and a wood surface sitting on a core of other layers is engineered. The two are usually installed the same way with nails or staples, so the fixings confirm it is wood without telling you which of the two it is.
What kind of floor is this if it is glued down?
Glue-down points to engineered hardwood, or to a vinyl plank specified for glue rather than a click joint. The solid floor in the table above is the case its maker rules out: Appalachian Flooring's FAQ says "Your Appalaches floor must be nailed or stapled to the subfloor."
Does the floor type change what removal costs?
Yes, and the table above shows how. Floating laminate and click vinyl remove at $1.30 per sq ft in a house or basement, and nailed hardwood or nailed engineered hardwood at $1.50 per sq ft. Glued-down flooring and tile are quoted after viewing, because the method decides the work.
Get your floor identified and priced in Toronto and the GTA
Send us a few photos taken at a floor vent or a doorway threshold, along with your room measurements, and we will tell you what the floor is and what removing it would cost. You can request a flooring quote at any time.
Top Floorings Depot
3781 Victoria Park Avenue, Unit 1, Toronto, ON M1W 3K5
www.topfloorings.com
Call: 416-499-0117
Text: 416-770-8819