Laminate flooring may seem like an easy choice when renovating your home, but you’ll want to consider laminate flooring’s pros and cons to ensure it’s the right choice for your home. In this blog, we’ll cover more than just the most common laminate flooring pros and cons. We’ll also cover what laminate flooring is, how it compares to vinyl flooring and more.
What is Laminate Flooring?
Laminate flooring is a type of flooring made to be both durable and affordable by sealing four layers of synthetic material together. The four layers include the wear, design, core, and underlayment layers.
The wear layer uses clear aluminum oxide to protect your floor against scratches. The design layer is a printed image, which means it can recreate the look of more expensive types of flooring like wood or tile. The bottom layers consist of the core layer, which is made of highly compressed wood fibers, and the underlayment, which is a soft layer built in to help with uneven subfloors.
Laminate flooring has been around for decades, but newer laminate flooring uses sharper high-definition imaging for the design layer, better seaming mechanisms, and an underlayment that is waterproof, yet still thin and soft. With these advances, the benefits of laminate flooring have increased over the years.
Top Laminate Flooring Pros and Cons
When considering whether to invest in laminate flooring, understanding the pros and cons can help. We’ve done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of laminate flooring pros and cons to help with your decision.
6 Pros of Laminate Flooring
1. High Quality Design Layer
With the newer technologies described above, the design layer of your laminate flooring is now considered high quality. Since the design layer is an image, you have the ability to choose between a number of designs that replicate other types of flooring, including hand-scraped, rustic, and whitewashed wood or stone. In fact, because the design layer is thicker than other types of flooring, such as vinyl, it can be embossed to even give you the feel of natural hardwood floors.
2. Life Span
When properly maintained, laminate flooring can last up to 25 years. If not properly maintained, your floor’s life span shortens to five to ten years.
3. Easy DIY Installation (But Not Recommended)
Although laminate flooring requires a saw, it’s fairly easy to DIY the installation. Most laminate flooring is a floating floor, which uses interlocking planks laid across an existing subfloor to create the new floor. The interlocking planks mean no adhesive, nails, or staples are needed to install laminate flooring. However, we always recommend using a professional flooring installation to make sure you achieve the highest quality flooring install.
4. Affordable
Compared to solid hardwood and engineered hardwood flooring, one of the benefits of laminate flooring is its cost. Laminate flooring is a more affordable flooring option that still provides durability and the look of other more expensive flooring options.
5. Easy to Clean
All you need to clean your laminate flooring is a bare-floor vacuum, a dry mop, or a soft broom. For stains, use a laminate floor cleaner or damp mop instead of a wet mop.
6. Durable
Considering laminate flooring doesn’t require much maintenance, it is very durable. It not only weathers well in high traffic areas, but it can offer UV resistance and can be waterproofed. The top wear layer also protects your floors from scratching or becoming discolored as easily as other types of flooring.
4 Cons of Laminate Flooring
1. Water-Resistant, Not Waterproof
While the underlayment is often waterproof and you can make your laminate floors waterproof, all laminate flooring is not considered waterproof. However, most laminate flooring does come water-resistant. So standing pools of water or excess water (from a mop, for example) can damage laminate flooring.
2. Resale Value
Although laminate flooring is a popular choice for homeowners and has better resale value than most types of vinyl flooring, solid hardwood and engineered hardwood have a higher resale value.
3. Repetitive Patterns
One complaint we often hear about laminate flooring is the repetitive patterns. However, there are installation methods that can help to avoid showing the same patterns over and over.
4. Not Necessarily Environmentally Friendly
If you’re looking for an environmentally friendly flooring option, laminate flooring may not be one of your top choices. Even if the company you buy your laminate flooring from uses recycled products for the core layer, the final layer is plastic and the materials used to seal the layers together are not usually eco-friendly.
Is Laminate Flooring Waterproof?
Unfortunately, most laminate flooring is not waterproof, and some brands even falsely claim that their laminate flooring is waterproof. So if you’re looking for waterproof floors, check with a trusted retailer about which brands are actually waterproof.
While most laminate flooring is not waterproof, the vast majority are water resistant. If you love the look of laminate flooring but need it to be waterproof, you can make your flooring waterproof by using polyurethane as a top coat or sealing the locking systems.
Is Laminate Flooring Better Than Vinyl?
If you’re considering laminate or vinyl – two of the top hard surface flooring options – for your next renovation, you may be wondering if laminate flooring is better than vinyl. Well, one is not actually better than the other.
As for the benefits of laminate flooring vs vinyl flooring, they often overlap. The cost of vinyl and laminate flooring is pretty similar, with both being less expensive than solid or engineered hardwood. In addition, both are stain-resistant, and they have similar life spans when properly maintained.
Now, what makes these types of flooring different? Where they’re best used. It’s not recommended to use laminate flooring in areas that are prone to water or will need to be cleaned with a wet-mop, like kitchens, laundry rooms, and bathrooms. So if renovating the floors in any of these rooms, vinyl is going to be the better choice.
If you’re still unsure whether the different laminate flooring pros and cons make laminate flooring your top choice, visit our Wexford, PA showroom or contact our team to learn more. Our flooring experts can show you different laminate flooring samples, talk you through the pros and cons of each specific brand, schedule your free in-home measurement, and more. Floor Concepts provides local flooring solutions to greater Pittsburgh, PA and the North Hills area. Get in touch today!
