Laminate Floor - The Ultimate Flooring Choice For Your Home

Laminate floors have become quite popular the last few years, and for good reason. Available in a wide variety of styles, colors, finishes and types laminate flooring adds to this ease of installation which brings down the cost of new flooring by making it a do it yourself operation.

A modest investment in tools allows the homeowner to lay these floors down with a minimun of effort, no smelly, messy adhesives for an instant new look for the home. We recently laid wood laminate floors in our home, covering almost the entire downstairs with it.

Since, we have noticed much less allergy problems than we had with our former carpeted rooms. The floors are easy to clean and keep much less dust and no dust mites. The rooms look larger and the entire home is brighter and cleaner.

Laminate floorings are available in a variety of types. You will find hardwood, laminate, exotics, handscrapped, and cork. Most floors resemble wood flooring, but there are even styles which resemble ceramic tile when installed.

Types of Laminate Floors

Hardwood Floors
These are really not laminates, as the hardwood flooring is really a solid wood plank. These floors are similiar to the laminates in the way they are installed. Using tongue and groove snap together technique, the hardwood floors are easy and fast to install. Hardwood flooring typically has more warmth and texture than the laminate floorings and may be refinished when they start to look dull and scratched. A hardwood floor will add value to your home, while a laminate floor may not.

Laminate Flooring
Laminate floorings are available in a wide variety of designs, textures, and ratings. The most popular are the wood grain types. These simulate hardwood floors at a much lower cost. Just about any tree species that is found on the face of the earth is replicated by some laminate flooring manufacturer. You will also find stone and ceramic tile designs.

Exotic Laminate Flooring
The Exotic Wood Laminate Floors include woods not found in North America. Most of these species are from tropical regions of Africa and countries like Burma, the Philapines in Southeast Asia and the South American countries of Argentina and Brazil.

European, and some American manufacturers use a rating system to designate use recommendations for their floors. The rating system ranges from AC1 through AC5. Most low end laminate floors, which are cheaper, are rated AC1. These floors are best utilized in low traffic areas of the home. AC3 is the highest rated flooring recommended for the home. This rating is designated as high traffic residential to light commercial. AC4 and AC5 are rated as commercial grade. There would be no reason to install a laminate floor of these ratings in the average home.

Laminate floors are usually composed of two to three layers. The pattern layer is the top layer. It is composed of a screen which is usually aluminum oxide and is very resistant to scratches, scrapes, scuffs, stains and burns. The next layer is composed of High Density Fiber (HDF). This layer is very hard and durable. The locking system is usually routed into this layer.

The third layer, if there is one, is the underlayment layer. This is composed of a foam material which is designed to cut down on the noise caused by hard soles walking in hard floors. It also will help resist the formation of molds and mildews under the floor.

Modern laminate floors are designed to be free floating. This means that they are installed without fastening them down. They can be installed over vinyl flooring, concrete, subfloor and low knap carpet. The locking system allows you to unlock and replace damaged planks if you need to without taking up the entire floor.

All laminate flooring types are similiarly manufactured. There is a solid core of a dense material which is clad on top with the tough pattern layer which is extremely resistant to stains, scratching, chipping and burns.

Laminate flooring should be installed on an underlayment which helps deter mold and mildew. It also cuts down on the racket produced by walking on wood floors with hard soled shoes. Some types of laminate floors have the underlayment already bonded to the flooring plank on the bottom, making these the easiest and fastest to install.

The species would include woods like teak, mahogany, Brazilian walnut, rosewood, and African Hickory. The rich hues of these woods can enliven just about any home with their unique colors and grain patterns.