Flooring is often the first thing that grabs attention when guests enter your home. When it comes to deciding the best floor type for your home or office, you want to choose one that serves all purposes, from aesthetics to functionality. More often than not, it comes down to choosing between hardwood and laminate flooring. Let’s look deeper into both flooring types to determine the better alternative between the two.
Hardwood vs. Laminate Flooring
CONSTITUENTS OF HARDWOOD AND LAMINATE FLOORING
Solid hardwood flooring planks are produced from single pieces of wood and can be purchased unfinished or prefinished. The best thing about solid wood flooring is that it can be sanded five times and more and re-finished to restore the finish. Solid hardwood flooring is available in different width sizes, lengths, and finishes.
Engineered hardwood flooring is composed of two or more layers. Bottom and middle layers are manufactured from cross-laid solid wood or plywood planks. The top layer consists of a solid sawn wood, often stained and prefinished in factory setting. The increased stability of engineered wood is achieved by running each layer at a 90° angle to the layer above and by using thin layers of wood that have little to no reaction to climatic change. This stability makes it engineered flooring a product that can be installed over all types of subfloors above, below or on grade.
Laminate flooring is a multilayer synthetic flooring product. The backing layer is designed to provide structural integrity to the product and to provide a barrier against moisture. The inner core layer is usually composed of melamine resin and fiber board materials to further enhance moisture resistance and increase durability. The top layer is the image design layer. This is where the high-resolution image of wood appears and where the texture is applied to enhance its realistic appeal.
AESTHETICS
While laminate flooring uses pre-designed patterns of wood texture, hardwood flooring reflects significant texture variation of wood grain. This ensures that each real wood plank is unique, making repetition between two planks impossible. Contrarily, identical patterns are repeated in laminate flooring on almost every 5 boards.
HARDNESS
While a quality laminate floor is highly resistant to moisture and harder than a natural wood surface as it undergoes extreme heat and pressure treatment, an authentic hardwood floor is softer and can dent easily, depending on the finish and maintenance. Wood is an organic material that responds to humidity and temperature changes, therefore solid hardwood flooring is best used in interiors where humidity levels remain between 40-60 percent.
You might want to choose laminate flooring for kitchen, basement, or bathroom due to its high resistance to moisture.
When it comes to comparing laminate vs. hardwood flooring, the former is scratch resistant compared to the latter. However, scratches and minor dents instantly show up on a laminate floor whereas they flawlessly blend with the unique appearance of most hardwood floors.
INSTALLATION AND EASE OF REPAIR
Installation is a large benefit of choosing laminate flooring. It is fairly easy to install laminate flooring as the locking and floating aspects of laminate floors are mostly self explanatory. Also, due to the ease of installation, having professional flooring contractors install this type of floor is less expensive than solid or engineered hardwood that requires specialized knowledge and tools.
Unlike a laminate floor, the best thing about an engineered or solid wood floor is that it can be repaired, replenished, and refinished easily, without requiring replacement of the damaged plank or the entire floor.
Laminate flooring installed with glue down method is harder to repair and cannot be sanded or refinished. In floating laminate flooring, there is still an option to remove and replace planks if damage is localized.
EASE OF MAINTENANCE
Whether solid or engineered, wood flooring requires more care than its laminate counterpart. While regular mopping, sweeping, or wiping is enough for the maintenance of laminate flooring, hardwood floors must be cleaned with special cleaners that preserve the finish and protect it from becoming dull.
LONGEVITY
If used and maintained properly, engineered or solid wood floors can continue to decorate your home for a lifetime. Contrarily, laminate floors have a shorter life span and continue to gradually wear down under foot traffic, requiring replacement after 20 years.
The best thing about hardwood flooring is that it can be sanded and refinished 4-5 times after its existing finish has worn down, thus easily outlasting laminate.
ECO-FRIENDLINESS
Made of 100 percent organic wood, solid hardwood floors are more eco-friendly than laminate flooring, which is produced from bonding of different composite materials. If hardwood flooring does need replacement, it can be disposed without any threat to the environment, unlike its laminate counterpart that may become an environment hazard.
Most engineered hardwood floor manufacturers comply with industry production standards, using glues that do not contain formaldehyde. On the other hand, production of laminate flooring requires large volumes of glue for bonding the composite materials. Some manufactures use cheaper toxic glues containing formaldehyde, which continue to emit toxic substances even after installation of the floor, polluting the environment. But this does not mean all laminate manufacturers use toxic glues during the laminate production process, there are quality non-toxic laminate floors available as well.
BOTTOM LINE
When it comes to choosing between hardwood and laminate flooring, it is important to do your homework well and carefully weigh the pros and cons of both types of floors before going ahead with the purchase.