Where Costco's DIY Flooring Is Made And If It's A Good Deal For Your Home Reno

Costco is a mecca for inexpensive deals from groceries to household items, but did you know the warehouse superstore also curates a home design collection too? Costco's roster of budget-friendly home design supplies and appliances can be found online or in-store, and one major wallet-conscious upgrade you can snag there is new flooring. But take caution; not all Costco flooring is created equal, and as it turns out, customers need to keep a keen eye on where it's made to avoid potential installation and maintenance issues. And seemingly there are two brands of flooring at Costco that appear to exhibit the opposite ends of the budget flooring quality spectrum: Golden Arowana Vinyl Flooring and Mohawk Home Waterproof Laminate Flooring.

Golden Arowana Vinyl is an aesthetically pleasing, wood-look-alike flooring that comes in five different colorways ranging from a deeper "macchiato" color to light blonde "Manchester Ivory" color. While it boasts waterproof qualities and realistic details on its Costco page, a group of consumers in their reviews of the product question Golden Arowana's quality. Meanwhile, Mohawk Home's laminate flooring consistently garners user reviews that boast longevity. The key difference that may explain the quality difference between the two? Where they are made. While Golden Arowana is manufactured in China, Mohawk Home is manufactured in the United States. Bearing this in mind, both floors appear to have costs and benefits that homeowners should weigh carefully before ultimately choosing which Costco-available flooring may be the best deal for their home.

Golden Arowana is not winning fans over at Costco or on the internet. Users on Costco's Golden Arowana's page highlight the flooring's flimsy, fragile nature, noting that corners chipped during installation and that the locking mechanism didn't actually function how they hoped. Some Golden Arowana customers even took to other online platforms like Reddit to vent their frustrations, and while people noted that user error may be a factor in some cases when the flooring didn't perform well, some surmised it could be a combination of bad installation coupled with a vinyl flooring that wasn't made from quality materials. The biggest takeaway here was to skip the Chinese-manufactured Golden Arowana planks, and to try Mohawk flooring instead, adding the suggestion to follow some tips for flawless vinyl plank flooring installation.

Conversely Mohawk's laminate flooring's fanbase is vocal on its Costco page and manufacturer's site, generally applauding the flooring's durability and noticeably quality materials. Even Reddit critics took to the platform to expound on how well the flooring held up to environmental factors like water and high traffic. As it turns out, different places of origin explains the significant gap in quality between it and Golden Arowana. Flooring manufactured in the United States must abide by incredibly strict standards of quality and safety, standards that floors manufactured internationally are not necessarily held to. Budget-friendly flooring that originates abroad, therefore, can be sold inexpensively to the consumer because of these less-monitored, lower quality of materials.

Despite Golden Arowana's place of manufacture, it appears to not pass along the monetary benefits of imported flooring. At $3.42 per square foot, a 15.22 square foot carton clocks in at $51.99 at Costco. Mohawk's options come with a $2.59 per square foot price tag; overall, that's $46.99 per carton (with 18.14 square foot coverage). Granted, the Golden Arowana's plank thickness measures significantly taller at 20 millimeters to Mohawk's 12; however, with good preparation of your subfloor (along with avoiding these other mistakes when installing vinyl plank flooring), it's really a minute difference that doesn't warrant the additional cost and seemingly worse quality. Though vinyl is thought to be the emerging player in low-maintenance floors, it appears that this particular vinyl versus laminate battle comes out in Mohawk laminate flooring's favor, both cost-wise and quality-wise.

There is, however, something to be said about achieving a particular aesthetic in your home. If that's the case, and Golden Arowana will help you fulfill that vision, just be prepared for the issues you may encounter. Regardless of which Costco floor you choose, both deals can be worth it for budget renovators. Remember, it's a good idea to consistently care for your floors so that they last longer, no matter what (here's how often you should be cleaning your vinyl plank flooring to mitigate issues); this way you'll get the best bang for your buck, a true Costco philosophy.