Wood Laminate Flooring

There’s something about a wooden floor.

There’s something about a wooden floor – it looks good, feels good, especially under bare feet, and it lends warmth to a room. But what do you really know about a wooden floor. Well, there are three different types of flooring that look like wood.

Firstly there’s the solid wood floor - a genuine wood floor consists of real planks of selected wood, the timber is dried and treated to perfection before it is protected with a wear resistant lacquer.

Then there is the veneered wood floor – this has a unique construction with a hard, wood fibre centre and a veneer layer that makes the floor hardwearing, stable and easy to maintain.

Finally there is the wood laminate flooring, which looks like wood, feels like wood and is extremely hard wearing. The only thing is that it almost certainly has little or no wood in it at all.

Wood laminate flooring is usually made of a melamine resin that is laminated into several layers to give it stability and strength, the upper layer being a photograph of hardwood beneath a hardwearing transparent finish. The assembled floor looks exactly like real wood, and there are many people who cannot tell the difference.

Wood Laminate flooring can be installed over concrete, hardwood, vinyl tile, linoleum, tile or virtually any other flat hard surface, but it is not recommended that it be installed in rooms that are likely to have water spilled in them, such as bathrooms, washrooms or an exposed porch or veranda.

It is possible for the core of the laminate to absorb water and swell or warp. This will depend on the interior makeup of the wood laminate flooring and is something that we can advise you about during our initial discussions. If you’d like to have any more information about using laminates for flooring, please give us a call at 011 830 1265