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More and more genuine hardwood flooring is hitting stores with a hand-scraped, worn finish that looks as if it spent years in a rustic country kitchen. But for real-world kitchen scrapes, scuffs, and dents, the fake stuff wins.
We accelerated the effects of foot traffic, dragged-in pebbles, dropped plates, splattered juice, and sunlight to see how well more than 30 varieties of flooring stood up to daily abuse. The best vinyl, linoleum, and laminates typically lasted twice as long as solid-wood flooring before their surface began showing wear.
Plastic laminates like those from market leaders Pergo and Shaw are the fastest-growing alternatives to wood. ...