Hear from Our Customers
Lake Mary is beautiful and humid. Between the natural lakes woven through communities like Greenwood Lakes and Crystal Lake Estates and Florida’s year-round moisture in the air, your floors are living in one of the more demanding environments in the state. LVP handles that well when it’s installed correctly. When it isn’t, you get buckling, gaps, and in worst cases, mold growing silently beneath the surface.
The homes here most of them built between the mid-1980s and 2010 sit on concrete slabs. Slabs hold and release moisture vapor long after they look completely dry. Proper moisture testing and a vapor barrier aren’t optional steps. They’re what separates a floor that lasts 20 years from one that starts failing in three.
Beyond durability, there’s the look. Lake Mary’s open-concept floor plans, long sight lines, and larger square footage mean a flooring job that’s off even slightly shows. Getting the transitions right between rooms, matching the layout to your lighting, and choosing the right product for your specific space are all part of what a professional installation actually includes. You end up with a floor that looks intentional, not installed.
Harrington Hardwood Floors has been working in Central Florida since 1990 which means we were here before a lot of Lake Mary’s current neighborhoods existed. We’ve worked in Heathrow, in Timacuan, in homes along the Rinehart Road corridor, and in the kind of executive-level properties where the standard for finished work is genuinely high.
That experience isn’t just tenure. It’s knowing what a Seminole County slab looks like after 25 years, what the humidity does to a floor that wasn’t prepped right, and how to run a job in a gated community without creating friction. We’re licensed, insured, and every project comes with a satisfaction guarantee. Geste Harms the owner is personally involved in the work, not managing from a distance while a rotating crew handles your home. That matters when you’re trusting someone with a $500,000-plus property in Lake Mary.
The first conversation is about your space the square footage, the existing floor, the subfloor condition, and what you’re trying to achieve with the finished result. For Lake Mary homes, that conversation almost always includes a discussion about moisture. If your home is near one of the city’s lakes or sits on an older slab, we want to know that before anything else. It changes how we approach the prep work.
Once we’re on-site, the subfloor gets assessed before installation begins. That means checking for level LVP requires no more than 3/16 of an inch variation over a ten-foot span and testing for moisture vapor coming through the concrete. If the slab needs leveling or a vapor barrier, that work happens first.
After prep, the planks acclimate to your home’s environment typically 48 to 72 hours before installation starts. This step matters in Florida because the humidity inside your home and the temperature from your AC system directly affect how the material behaves once it’s locked in place. From there, installation moves room by room, with careful attention to transitions, expansion gaps, and any staircase work that’s part of the project. Cleanup is included. When we leave, the space is ready to use.
Ready to get started?
Luxury vinyl plank installation through Harrington Hardwood Floors covers the full scope subfloor prep, moisture testing, vapor barrier where needed, product selection guidance, installation, transitions, and cleanup. There’s no handoff to a second contractor for the stairs. Staircase installation and refinishing of existing hardwood treads is part of what we do, which matters in Lake Mary’s two-story homes where a flooring upgrade that stops at the bottom of the staircase looks unfinished.
On the product side, not every LVP is right for Seminole County’s climate. We guide you toward SPC (Stone Polymer Composite) core products with appropriate wear layer thickness 20 mil or higher for high-traffic areas in an active household. These hold up better in Florida’s humidity cycles and perform well on the slab-on-grade foundations that make up virtually all of Lake Mary’s housing stock.
Standard residential flooring replacement in Lake Mary doesn’t require a building permit, so there’s no waiting on approvals before the project can start. We carry full licensing and insurance under Florida’s DBPR requirements, which means your home and your investment are protected from the first day to the last.
It depends on the product and the installation, and near Lake Mary’s lakes, those two things matter more than they do in drier areas. Communities like Greenwood Lakes, Crystal Lake Estates, and Lake Emma Sound sit close to natural water bodies, which means groundwater moisture levels in the soil and the concrete slabs above it can run higher than average. LVP itself is waterproof on the surface, but moisture trapped beneath the floor from slab vapor emission is a different problem entirely. That’s where mold, odor, and structural failure actually come from.
For lake-adjacent homes in Lake Mary, the right answer is an SPC core LVP product with a quality wear layer, installed over a properly tested and prepared slab with a vapor barrier. Done that way, LVP is genuinely one of the best flooring choices for this environment more stable than hardwood, more durable than laminate, and far better suited to Florida’s moisture conditions than most people realize.
With a quality product and a proper installation, you’re looking at 15 to 25 years in most residential settings. Premium SPC products with thicker wear layers 20 mil and above can push closer to 25 to 30 years under normal household conditions. The wear layer is the single biggest factor in longevity; it’s the protective coating that takes the daily abuse from foot traffic, furniture, and pets.
In Florida, the other major factor is what happens beneath the floor. A product that could last 25 years in a well-prepped installation might show problems within five if the slab wasn’t moisture-tested or the vapor barrier was skipped. Florida’s humidity cycling cool AC air inside, hot humid air outside creates the kind of thermal movement that stresses an improperly installed floor over time.
Yes, and this is one of the more important things to understand before you hire anyone. Virtually every LVP manufacturer’s warranty includes language that voids coverage if the floor wasn’t installed according to their specifications. Those specs typically cover subfloor flatness tolerances, moisture testing requirements, underlayment compatibility, expansion gap minimums, and acclimation time. If any of those steps were skipped or done incorrectly, the warranty is gone.
This is one of the practical reasons professional installation matters beyond just the quality of the finished look. A licensed contractor who follows the manufacturer’s installation guidelines protects your warranty, which protects your investment. For a Lake Mary homeowner putting premium LVP into a home worth $450,000 or more, losing warranty coverage because of a shortcut in the prep work is a real and avoidable financial risk.
The core difference is the material each product is made from. Laminate has a wood-fiber core similar to MDF that absorbs moisture and swells when it gets wet. LVP has a vinyl core that doesn’t absorb water at all. On the surface they can look nearly identical, but their behavior in a humid environment is completely different.
For Lake Mary, the answer is LVP, and it’s not a close call. Florida’s year-round humidity averaging around 74 percent combined with the moisture vapor that concrete slabs emit makes laminate a risky choice in most Central Florida homes. LVP handles that environment without issue, which is why it’s become the dominant hard-surface flooring choice across Seminole County over the past decade.
Sometimes, but it depends on what’s underneath and what condition it’s in. LVP can be installed over existing tile, vinyl, or hardwood in some cases, as long as the surface is flat, stable, and free of significant damage. The flatness requirement no more than 3/16 of an inch variation over ten feet applies regardless of what the existing floor is made of. If the existing floor has high spots, low spots, or damaged sections, those need to be addressed before anything goes on top.
In Lake Mary specifically, the more important question is usually the slab beneath the existing floor. If the current flooring has been in place for 20-plus years which is common in homes built in the late 1980s and 1990s it’s worth assessing what’s actually happening at the slab level before adding another layer. Moisture problems that weren’t visible before can become visible quickly once a new floor goes down over them. A proper assessment before installation is the only way to know what you’re actually working with.
Start with your lighting. Lake Mary’s homes particularly the larger floor plans in communities like Heathrow and Timacuan often have a mix of natural light from large windows and artificial light from recessed fixtures. The same LVP plank can look warm and rich in one lighting condition and flat or gray in another. Looking at samples in the actual space at different times of day is worth the extra step.
Beyond lighting, think about the sight lines in your floor plan. Open-concept layouts common in Lake Mary’s 1990s and 2000s construction mean your floor is visible across a large continuous space. Wider planks tend to work better in larger rooms; they look more proportional and less busy. Warmer wood tones are trending in 2025 and hold up well aesthetically over time without feeling dated quickly. If you’re choosing for a home you plan to sell in the next few years, neutral mid-tones with natural wood grain texture tend to photograph well and appeal to a broad range of buyers in the Seminole County market.
Other Services we provide in Lake Mary
