Laminated Flooring

If you get your eyes really close to wooden laminate flooring what do you see?

The surface looks just like a wooden floor with a highly polished surface. But in fact it is not. Laminate flooring is made up of several layers of melamine resin, sometimes but not always with a chip-wood composite interior.

The wood grain that you’re looking at is in fact a thin layer of paper that has a colour photograph of wood on it. This paper layer is covered with a clear resin and that in turn with a layer of aluminium oxide, giving it a highly durable surface indistinguishable from real polished wood.

Laminate flooring planks, depending on the type you buy, are either snapped together or glued together. The "snap-together" kind is easier to install but not as structurally sound as the "glue-together" type. Also, the "glue-together" type resists moisture better. Laminate flooring is both easy to lay down – it doesn’t have to be nailed down as a solid hardwood floor does.

The adjacent planks just click into each other in a tongue and groove manner, and the floor floats on an underlay of ¼” foam rubber. This acts as a noise baffle, an insulator and gives a soft tread to the floor.Laminate flooring is extremely easy to maintain – it can be mopped with a slightly damp mop. You can also buy special cleaning pads that look similar to a mop and have replaceable dust-catching pads.

If you’d like to know more about laminates, call us at 011 830 1265.