Short answer: vinyl is the quieter floor underfoot. A click-lock SPC hybrid vinyl with pre-attached IXPE underlay deadens footfall and impact noise more than a laminate of the same thickness, mostly because the SPC core absorbs energy where laminate’s HDF core resonates. The gap closes if you lay laminate over a quality acoustic underlay, but vinyl still wins on like-for-like installs.
Why vinyl reads as quieter
Two things drive how loud a floating floor sounds: the core, and what’s between the core and the subfloor. Vinyl plank — particularly SPC hybrid — has a denser, more damped core than laminate. Laminate’s high-density fibreboard core is stiffer and rings more, which is what people are hearing when they say a laminate floor sounds hollow.
Most modern vinyl planks also ship with IXPE acoustic underlay bonded to the back of the plank. Laminate usually doesn’t — you buy the underlay separately and roll it out before clicking the planks together. If a laminate floor is laid straight over the subfloor with a budget 2 mm foam, it’ll always sound noisier than an SPC plank with factory IXPE.
Footfall noise (the noise you hear)
Footfall is the sound you hear standing in the room — heels, kids running, a chair scraping back. On vinyl, the softer wear layer and IXPE backing absorb a lot of that energy before it bounces back up. Laminate, with its harder wear layer and stiffer core, returns more of it as audible click and clack. If you’ve ever walked across a showroom and heard your own footsteps echoing back, you were almost certainly on laminate over a hard subfloor.
Impact noise (the noise the room below hears)
Impact noise is what travels down through the floor to the room below — the issue in upstairs apartments and double-storey homes. Body corporates often spec a minimum acoustic rating for any hard floor on an upper level, and that rating is set by the underlay, not the plank. On either vinyl or laminate, you can pass a body-corporate spec if the right acoustic underlay sits between the plank and the slab. The plank choice matters less here than people assume; the underlay does the heavy lifting. Read more on do you need underlay for vinyl flooring if you’re working out the layers.
Where the answer flips
A few situations reverse the usual ranking:
- Thick laminate over premium acoustic underlay: a 12 mm laminate over a 3 mm rubber-cork acoustic underlay can be quieter than a budget 4 mm vinyl with thin EVA backing.
- Uneven subfloor: SPC vinyl is rigid and telegraphs subfloor undulation, which makes joints click apart and creak. Laminate is slightly more forgiving here, so on a marginal subfloor you may end up with less noise from a laminate install than from vinyl.
- Glue-down vinyl: bonded to the slab, glue-down LVP is the quietest of the lot — there’s no air gap to resonate. It’s not a floating floor, so the comparison isn’t fair, but if absolute quiet is the brief, this is the answer.
What to pick by room
- Bedrooms and home offices: vinyl, ideally SPC hybrid. The quieter footfall matters most where you sit still. See our notes on the best flooring for bedrooms.
- Upstairs apartments: either material works if you spec a body-corporate-rated acoustic underlay. Confirm the rating with strata before you order.
- Kitchens and laundries: vinyl, for a different reason — it’s waterproof. The acoustic side is a bonus. Our guide to what is waterproof flooring covers the wet-zone trade-offs.
- Open-plan living over a slab: vinyl reads quieter, but if you’re set on the look of laminate, a 3 mm acoustic underlay closes most of the gap.
The bottom line
Vinyl wins on noise in most installs you’d actually do. Laminate isn’t loud — it’s just less damped — and it can be made nearly as quiet with the right underlay. If you want to understand the construction differences that drive this, our explainer on the difference between hybrid and SPC flooring is the next read. Bring a sample home, walk on it on the subfloor it’ll actually sit on, and trust your ears.
Ready to shop? Browse our full laminate flooring range online, or drop into our Sydney or Brisbane showroom to see the range in person.