LAMINATE FLOORING PROS AND CONS

Wood flooring options: the pros and cons of laminate flooring, engineered flooring, real hardwood flooring, and vinyl wood-look flooring

When people are choosing wood flooring for their new house or remodel project, they often ask, “Which is better for my house—laminate flooring or real wood flooring?” When choosing wood flooring options, homeowners have several parameters in mind. First and foremost, the look of wood flooring is very appealing. Wood flooring is homey, warm, cozy, a bit old-fashioned, and it simply looks nice.

Wood flooring is also easy to clean and doesn’t hold debris and pet dander like carpet, it’s stain-resistant, and easier on your feet and joints than stone, concrete, or tile.

However, with today’s rapidly expanding flooring technologies, you can get the look of real hardwood flooring with several different flooring products, including laminated flooring, engineered wood flooring, hardwood flooring, and even vinyl flooring.

Carpet One in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, has a simple question to ask people who are considering the pros and cons of laminate flooring versus real wood flooring. “If the kids scratch your wood floor and damage it, is it a memory of the kids growing up or is it a catastrophe?”

LAMINATE FLOORING

If a scratch is a catastrophe, then you’d better consider laminate flooring. Laminate flooring is just what it sounds like—sandwiched layers of tough wood core topped with a hard fiber board surface that is actually a photographic reproduction of a real wood floor. It’s more resistant to dinging and scratching than a real wood floor, more resilient, very easy to install yourself, and dramatically less expensive than real wood flooring.

At Carpet One in Glenwood Springs, you can find laminate flooring in several well-known brand names such as Biltmore Estates, Harris, Tarkett, Liz Claiborne, Shaw, Bruce, Hartco, Mannington, Columbia, Lanzon, and Mohawk.

Laminate flooring can easily be installed by homeowners. The flooring comes in “planks” that snap together and eliminate the tedious measuring and nailing that comes with real wood flooring.

The cons of laminate flooring? The surface of the floor is a picture of a wood floor, and it can eventually wear away under heavy use. Also, laminate flooring cannot be refinished. Because of the nature of several layers of laminated wood, if you have a big water spill on the floor, the water can cause the floor to swell and delaminate.

ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORING

Engineered wood flooring is a solution for those who prefer the durability and ease of installation of a laminate floor, but want the look of real wood. Engineered flooring is composed of dimensionally stable cross-patterned layers of wood topped with a veneer of real hardwood. Engineered flooring will wear and scratch like a real hardwood floor, and it can be refinished, but only once or twice. After that, the veneer will wear off and you’ll be looking at the layers underneath the veneer. Like laminate flooring, engineered flooring is easy for homeowners to install and requires no sanding and finishing. Engineered flooring is more expensive than laminate flooring at $10-$20 a square foot, but you get the look of real wood without the real wood price.

If a scratch in the wood flooring isn’t a big deal and the normal wear and tear of everyday life on a wood floor doesn’t bother you, then you may wish to consider the idea of real wood flooring. It has all those characteristics mentioned above—warm, homey, real, durable, and charming. But there are also some significant drawbacks to real wood flooring. The major downside to real wood flooring, whether it’s a hardwood such as maple, oak, cherry, hickory, or even walnut, or a softer wood such as Douglas fir—is expense. Material costs can easily run $10-$25 a square foot, and installation can run another $5 a foot.

REAL WOOD FLOORING

Hardwood flooring is truly the “real deal”, and the look, feel, durability, and charm of a real wood floor is undeniable. However, there are real considerations to installing a hardwood floor. Real wood flooring must be professionally installed and finished. After carefully laying out lines on the floor, the installer must nail each piece to the next in a time-consuming process. Once a wood floor is installed, the installer must go across the floor and fill in chips and flaws in the wood by hand with a bonding putty. The entire floor must be sanded with a large orbital sander and then finally lacquered with a strong-smelling, expensive varnish. This isn’t a job you want to try yourself.

Then, in case that doesn’t bother you, wood flooring sometimes isn’t suitable for the arid climates of the mountain West. Quite often wood flooring has been harvested, milled, and dried in climates where the humidity is 25% on a dry, hot day, and up to 90% on a muggy day. When the flooring material is shipped West and installed in a home where the outside humidity is 10%, shrinking and cracking can occur that can become unsightly.

Still, some folks prefer real wood flooring. Even though it may crack and shrink, it’s expensive to install, and it can show more wear than other flooring options, it’s REAL WOOD. Some people prefer to know that they have a real wood floor underneath their feet and not simply a picture of a wood floor, and we understand that! In the Aspen and Glenwood Springs area, some of the finest custom homes in the world are being constructed, and the proud owners of these homes want nothing but the finest materials. Also, wood flooring is a permanent flooring solution. Once installed, it can be refinished several times and it will be beautiful for decades.

At Carpet One in Glenwood Springs, we stock a complete selection of hardwood and real wood flooring materials, including recycled old-growth Douglas fir, white and red oak, walnut, hickory, cherry, and exotic hardwoods. Our professional installers will make your new wood floor look beautiful, and you’ll enjoy the feeling of real hardwood flooring under your feet.

DON’T FORGET ABOUT VINYL FLOORING

If you want the warm look of wood flooring but you’re floored by the price of the other options, take a hard look at some of the vinyl flooring options. Long known as “linoleum flooring”, vinyl has come a long way since the 1960’s. The best-quality vinyl floors can be installed for a fraction of the cost of a wood floor, and it takes a practiced eye to tell the difference between vinyl and laminate or engineered flooring. For rental houses, apartments, high-traffic areas, and other places where good-looking, low-cost flooring is desired, vinyl is a great solution—durable, attractive, low in cost, easy to install, easy to clean, and needs no maintenance.

Carpet One in Glenwood Springs has a great selection of vinyl flooring, and several beautiful patterns of wood flooring that are great imitations of the real thing—a warm, beautiful wood floor.

970-945-8633
Carpet OneŽ of Glenwood Springs - 2628 S. Glen Avenue, Glenwood Springs, Colorado 81601
Email: info@carpetone-glenwood.com