When choosing bathroom flooring, you have the same considerations as you do for flooring for other rooms in your house. Is it durable? Will it stand up to the kids? Does it look nice or tacky? How does it feel under bare feet.

But the main consideration for bathroom flooring is, of course, moisture.

Let's look at your top bathroom flooring options. We're counting down, from worst to best:

7. Carpet

Summary:  Never a good idea.

A horribly bad choice for bathroom flooring. Moisture and carpeting do not mix. However, if you still must have carpeting in your bathroom, we have pointers from a professional carpet installer

6. Solid Hardwood

Summary:  Not the best or even close, but there are ways to make hardwood work, if you're determined.

A slightly better bathroom flooring choice than carpet, solid hardwood looks great and feels warm under foot. But moisture kills solid hardwood. Make certain it's perfectly installed, with no gaps for moisture. This likely means hiring installers--unless your day job happens to be that of a hardwood floor installer.

5. Laminate Flooring

Summary:  Cheap flooring that will work in bathrooms if you take precautions to protect wood base from moisture.

Surprisingly, laminate flooring is a better bathroom flooring choice than solid hardwood. I say "surprisingly" because laminate flooring is no more than resin-impregnated paper atop a wood chip base. The surface of laminate plank is actually a photograph of whatever it's supposed to be simulating: oak, cherry, slate, marble.

On top of that is what the manufacturers call the "wear layer." The wear layer is a clear layer of melamine. But this wear layer is amazingly strong. DuPont RealTouch, for instance, warrants the wear layer on its line of laminate flooring for 30 years. Because the seams are glued together, it's difficult for moisture to work its way downward.

Laminate is easy to clean, too. But laminate still has that wood chip base, and should it happen to contact with moisture it will expand and bubble and the only way to fix it is to tear it out.

Laminate Flooring Guide for Bathrooms

• Oak is the most popular style of wood or wood-look laminate flooring. Dupont's embossed-in-register feature means that the wood grain is imprinted in the product, giving it a more authentic wood-grain look (and better slip resistance).
  Buy Red Oak Laminate Flooring Direct
• Pine is also great for bathrooms because it reflects light better and looks cleaner.
  Buy Pine Laminate Flooring Direct
• Tuscan Stone. Laminate flooring doesn't have to look like wood. How about a Tuscan Stone Terra to give your bathroom a richer look? In fact, the deeper embossing of the stone laminate further reduces the chance of slipping.
  Buy Tuscan Stone Terra Laminate Flooring Direct
• Travertine is a lighter colored stone, and in this laminate flooring application it will brighten up your bathroom considerably.
  Buy Tavas Travertine Laminate Flooring Direct
• Slate. Part of Dupont's popular RealTouch line, this light-colored slate feels like real stone--except in this laminate version, it's warmer on bare feet than stone!
  Buy Dupont Real Touch Elite Gray Slate Laminate Flooring Direct

4. Engineered Wood

Summary:  Better than solid wood, due to engineered wood flooring's dimensional stability.

Engineered wood is great stuff. It's got a plywood base that holds up well against moisture. And it looks terrific because the top layer is real wood. If you want the wood flooring look in a bathroom, engineered wood is the best choice.

3. Stone

Summary:  Good choice. If you can afford it.

No moisture problems with marble, granite, limestone, and the other stone flooring options. Stone is mid-level is this list and not at the top because of a number of issues.

The first one is that it's cold. The second issue: it tends to be slippery. This can be solved by having the stone textured by sandblasting or buy purchasing naturally textured stone, such as slate.

But the main issue that pulls this bathroom flooring option down, in my opinion, is cost. Stone flooring is by far your most expensive flooring option.

2. Sheet or Tile Vinyl

Summary:  Passable aesthetics; supreme practicality.

Vinyl is the most popular choice for bathroom flooring for several reasons. Vinyl is very much a do-it-yourself job (you can install vinyl tiles in a weekend, easily). And there are thousands of style options.

Sheet or tile vinyl flooring are your two options within this category. One downside of the vinyl tiles is that, after awhile, they tend to come up. Sheet vinyl is the solution to that, but sheet vinyl is difficult to install for the home remodeler.

The main reason vinyl occupies the #2 spot is that it's cheap. But the reason it's not #1 is that, well, it's vinyl. No matter how fancy the style and texturing, it still looks and feels like vinyl.

1. Ceramic Tile

Summary:  The best of all worlds.

Like stone, ceramic tile can achieve a rich, textured, solid feeling. Like vinyl, it's waterproof and it's fairly inexpensive. And like wood flooring, it looks pretty good.

There are so many different types of ceramic tiles, you can get exactly the floor you want. You can even find ceramic tile that looks like stone. It comes in sizes between 4"x4" to 2'x2', and comes in a wide variety of shapes such as octagonal and hexagonal. Mosaic tiles come in pre-mounted plastic mesh sheets, so you don't have to individually set each tile. With tinted grout, you can be even more creative. It cleans up well and bravely resists even standing pools of water.

Downsides: like stone, it's cold (though radiant or heated tile is available. Also, it can be slippery. But texturing solves that problem. Smaller tiles are less slippery, because more grout is used and the grout acts as a non-skid surface.