Abstract Analysis assumptions in the design of floating offshore wind turbines can lead to inadequate designs that ultimately affect performance and cost of the system. One of the common assumptions made is the use of steady wind fields for analysis and design. In reality, the dynamic components of wind fields, known as wind turbulence, can be significant thus inducing significant responses in the system not captured by the assumption of steady winds. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of turbulent wind fields on the performances of a semisubmersible-type and a Tension Leg Platform (TLP)-type offshore wind turbine. The wind turbine implemented in this study is the 5 MW reference turbine developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the U.S. The selected semisubmersible platform has been studied in the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation (OC4) project by NREL, while the TLP concept is a three-column TLP developed and sized by Houston Offshore Engineering, an Atkins company. To address the identified concern, the method implemented is a coupled aerodynamic-elastic-hydrodynamic-control approach, which accounts for all important effects in estimating the responses and generated power of the system. Representative load cases with and without wind turbulence are considered to delineate turbulence-induced impacts on the two concepts. The system characteristic responses, such as nacelle accelerations, towerbase forces, towerbase moments, generated power, and platform motions, are focused on and compared. The extent to which the listed results are affected by wind turbulence depends on the characteristics of each floating platform. Discussions provided in this paper relate the observed responses to the platform characteristics. Findings of this paper offer significant insight when considering hull form selection. The primary contribution of this work is to increase the depth of understanding on the importance of wind turbulence in the response characteristics of semisubmersible-type and TLP-type wind turbine platforms.