Laminate Flooring

Choose Laminate Flooring For Your Home

Wood adds an elegant and classic look to any home. Due to this, it’s considered to be one of the most popular flooring types. There are many benefits of wood flooring, including providing a homey feel to any room and increasing the value of a property. However, not everyone can afford hardwood flooring, which is where laminate flooring comes in.

Why Choose Laminate Flooring?

When it comes to price, laminate flooring is considerably more affordable. This is because the laminate wood flooring is made of composite wood that is pressed together and kept intact by exposing it to high temperatures. To make it look like real hardwood, the composite layer is topped with a high-definition image of wood that is covered by another protective layer.

Laminate flooring is meant to imitate real wood and sometimes, even stone. As you’d expect, it doesn’t look exactly like the real thing. The inner layer of laminate flooring is made of melamine resin and fiber board materials.

Installation

Aside from being made of inexpensive materials, the installation of laminate flooring is also considerably more affordable than actual hardwood. In fact, the installation cost is almost 50 percent cheaper than hardwood flooring installation.

While most laminate flooring options are available in plank forms, some brands provide more convenience for people who are installing the flooring on their own by putting a glue backing on each plank. After installation, laminate floors usually appear to be ‘floating’ over the sub-floor atop the foam or film underlayment. This underlayment is a part of the flooring that gives it its sound and moisture-reducing properties.

While installing the flooring on your own might be cheaper, it’s important to ensure that it’s completed properly, otherwise you might get the laminate wood peak—a state where adjacent boards form a ‘V’ shape projecting from the gaps on the floor.

Durability and Maintenance

With regards to durability, laminate floors are at an advantage against wood flooring when it comes to scratch-resistance, moisture-resistance, and overall wear and tear. Maintenance of laminate flooring is also advantageous when compared to hardwood flooring since it can easily be cleaned.

Maintenance of laminate flooring consists of removing dirt and dust particles from the surface of the flooring by sweeping it regularly. If not removed, these particles might lead to scratching on laminate flooring, particularly in rooms that experience high foot traffic.

The laminate flooring should also be kept relatively dry because moisture can cause the planks to warp, swell, and deform. To avoid damage due to moisture absorption, choose laminate flooring that has water-resistant coatings. Additionally, make sure to wipe the laminate immediately when liquid gets spilled.

When using cheaper laminate flooring, you might experience gaps between the planks. Maintaining these types of laminate planks mean that you should regularly “tap” the boards back into place using appropriate tools. But if you have flexibility in your budget, it’s better to use quality glue-less floors which have attaching mechanisms that can hold the planks together even without adhesives.