Compare carpet, hardwood flooring, laminate floors, ceramic tile, and other flooring types to decide what works best for you. The choice of material for floor covering is affected by factors such as cost, endurance, noise insulation, comfort and cleaning effort. Carpet is a floor covering woven or felted from natural or man-made fibers. Many different species of wood are fabricated into wood flooring in two primary forms: plank and parquet. Hard flooring is a family of flooring materials that includes ceramic tile and natural stone products. Unlike brittle tiles made of minerals, resilient flooring is made of material that has some elasticity, giving the flooring a degree of flexibility called resilience. Resilient flooring includes many different manufactured products including linoleum.