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How to Protect Luxury Vinyl Flooring in 3 Simple Steps

Sharing our 3 simple steps to protect your new luxury vinyl flooring. It’s so easy you’ll wish you had done it sooner. And the best part…it’s FREE!

I’ve been working on our laundry room makeover for the past few weeks.

Have you been following along?

One of the updates to the new and improved laundry room was installing new luxury vinyl floating flooring.

It was super easy to do and there was nothing we needed to do ahead of time to prepare for the installation.

Can you believe it NO prep work?

That’s a win in my book!

All we had to do was just click the new interlocking flooring together right over our old floors.

I’m almost done with the laundry room makeover and just started with the storage solutions and decorating in my new space.

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I bought a set of lockers for storage and they look absolutely perfect in my modern farmhouse style laundry room.

They were exactly what I was looking for!

The lockers are a neutral gray color and kind of give the room a bit of an industrial vibe.

And the lockers store LOTS of stuff!

So much more than the old wire shelving we had before this makeover.

But the new lockers are pretty heavy especially after I fill them up with all that stuff I plan to store in them.

What about my beautiful new flooring?

I didn’t want the locker feet to dent or damage our brand new floors!

Wait until you see the solution I came up with to protect our new flooring!!

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How to Protect Luxury Vinyl Flooring

full view of school lockers against wall with towel under legs on floor

I put a towel under the lockers to prevent any scratches as soon as we moved them into the laundry room.

Now doesn’t that purple striped towel look pretty!?

Haha

As you can see this locker unit is on metal legs that aren’t really finished very nicely on the bottom.

Many of locker sets I saw when searching didn’t have legs at all and just sat flush against the floor.

If I had found a set of lockers like that without legs I could have just popped on some felt furniture pads to protect my new floors.

But I really like the look of my lockers with the bottom raised up on the legs.

First of all they give the unit some more height, which is great.

And the legs also make it a little easier to get into that bottom row of lockers.

close up of middle locker legs on top of towel on floor

But as you can see in this close-up photo the bottom of those legs are a bit rough and sharp.

They definitley would have scratched the floor for sure!

And they probably would dent the floors after filling the lockers up with heavy bottles of laundry detergent and other supplies.

What Can You Use to Protect Vinyl Floors?

close up of three front locker legs sitting under towel on floor

Remember those felt pads I mentioned before if my lockers didn’t have legs?

Well, since I do have legs I think small furniture pads would protect the floors but they’d look awful.

I mean you’d be able to clearly see them because of the shape of the locker legs.

Nope that wouldn’t work for me…that would definitely bug me!

Another option is a floor mat that would lay under the entire locker unit with all the legs resting on the mat.

But then I’d be covering my pretty new floors with a big mat so I didn’t want to do that.

view looking into laundry room from hallway wood floors meet new vinyl floor

Then I had an incredibly awesome amazing idea if I do say so myself! LOL

Why not make floor pads out of a leftover floor tile?

YES!

That was it!!

It was perfect!!!

I could make them any size, they would match the flooring and the best thing….they would be FREE!

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3 Simple Steps to Protect Floors

hands cutting vinyl floating floor tile on table saw

1. Cut Floor Tile

Since the vinyl tiles were floating interlocking tiles they were fairly thick which was good to use for protecting the floors from the rough bottoms of the locker feet.

And the back of the vinyl tiles have a soft grip material so they won’t scratch the floors.

I grabbed a leftover floor tile and got to work.

Cutting the tile in 3×3 squares for the larger double locker legs and 2×2 squares for the smaller single ones.

Using my table saw made this job super easy and fast.

hand holding small paint brush painting cut open edge of diy floor protectors

2. Paint Edges of Cut Floor Tile Pieces

Since the material in the middle of the tile was light in color I decided to paint it so that it would blend in better with the floors.

I used black chalkboard paint that I had here at home but any craft paint would do the job.

stack of diy floor protection coasters in front of locker sitting on towel

3. Place Floor Coasters Under Locker

Once the paint was dry I was ready to put my DIY floor protector coasters in place.

Isn’t that a fun name…floor coasters?!

I like it!

Don’t you?

3x3 diy floor protection coaster on floor next to legs of lockers of

After removing that pretty purple towel, my husband Chris lifted up the lockers and I slid a coaster under each leg.

This was the hardest part of the project…lifting up the heavy lockers to place the floor protectors underneath.

But just look how it blends so nicely with the floor even though it’s bigger than the actual locker leg.

A felt furniture pad no matter what size would’ve been an eyesore.

front leg of locker shown with diy floor protector under it

I’m glad I took the extra 10 minutes to paint the edges of the cut tiles.

The black edges also helps the floor protectors blend with the luxury vinyl flooring.

And here they are all in place under each locker leg…

view of school gym lockers in laundry room with diy floor protectors under all legs

Now I don’t have to worry about scratches or dents on my new floor.

These DIY floor coasters would be useful for anything heavy to protect your new vinyl floors.

Furniture, appliances, or whatever else may cause damage to your flooring but not with these simple floor coasters.

I just love easy and free DIY ideas, don’t you?

You may enjoy seeing the other DIY projects in my laundry room makeover:

This post includes some affiliate links which means we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. You can read our full disclosure policy here.

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