Real wood or laminate flooring, which is best?
People often ask why they should buy real wood floors when they can buy laminate floors that look like the real thing. After all, laminates are quite a bit cheaper.
Don’t rush to buy laminates, though. You need to think through what you want form a floor. For example, how important is durability and ease of repair? These are important advantages of real wood. Hardwoods are much stronger and harder than laminates, so they will last longer. They also have a solid ring when you walk across them, whether hand scraped, oiled or lacquered.
Another advantage of wood floors, is that with care they last much longer than laminate flooring. If you buy hardwood floors for your home you are assured of having flooring that will last for many years – they are usually guaranteed for 10 years.
Laminate flooring is made from a variety of materials, usually including a melamine top coating. The substrate can be made from recycled wood, so that it has the weight and feel of wood. One of the problems with laminate flooring is that melamine resin is made with formaldehyde.
Although laminate flooring is reckoned to be better than board made from particles bound together with formaldehyde, the coating does emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which have been shown to be harmful to humans.
There is no doubt that laminates are inferior to material like oiled oak flooring in many ways. First, there can be pollution from the coating, and secondly, if you do damage the surface, it is very difficult to repair – real wood flooring can be repaired
Another problem with laminate flooring is that if it knocked at an edge, it is likely to break, with a small chunk breaking off. It is almost impossible to repair this sort of damage without an ugly mess remaining. Of course, if you stain the laminate, it is also difficult to remove the mark without damaging the surface.