Laminate floorings are one the most intuitive inventions in the home décor, and a much-needed substitute to hardwood. They aren’t only the choice of environmental-friendly people, but also of those who are looking for affordable, durable and highly customizable designs for flooring at their home. Laminate floors are usually available in two distinctive categories—they either resemble the design, pattern, looks and feel of real wood, or they come in tiles to give your house a unique look. But laminate flooring is actually something that anyone can have at their home, but because of the subfloors at your home, heat and moisture, you may have to take some additional measures. So let’s have a look at all of them.
- Where are you planning to install the laminate flooring matters
The foremost factor that determines whether you should go for laminate flooring or not is the story where you are going to install it. To make your understanding more lucid. There are three different levels of floors. The first, that is, the ground floor of your home is called on-grade. The basement of your home is called below-grade, and anything above the ground level is called above-grade. The catch is that you can install engineered wood (laminate flooring) on any floor level, but you cannot install hardwood floor in your basement. This is because of the moisture level below-grade that can swell the real wood. So that’s one advantage of using laminate flooring. But this doesn’t mean there are no limitations on the laminate floors installation. Read the following to know when laminate floors aren’t a great choice for your home.
- Laminate flooring expands and contracts more than real wood
Because of the synthetic nature and use of plywood layers in laminate flooring, it’s more prone to expansion and contraction under varying temperatures. Scientifically, everything that’s heated will expand, but in this case, laminate flooring expands more than hardwood. This doesn’t imply that you can’t use laminate floorings if you live in hot climatic regions. All you have to do when you install the laminate floors is to use a spacer and leave around 0.5 inch to 1.5 inch of free space on the borders. This would allow for the laminate floors to expand under hot conditions.
- The type of subfloor matters
Well, to be honest, laminate floors are designed to be resilient against varying conditions, so they are almost applicable on any kind of subfloors, unlike wood that you can’t install on concrete subfloor without using an additional layer of plywood. Concrete subfloor is the only one that usually have issues of moisture and smooth finish that disrupts the even finish of the flooring. So if you want to use laminate flooring on concrete, just make sure you are using either polyethylene or foam sheet to avoid contact with the excess moisture that concrete floors can catch. Laminate floors are resistant but not moisture-proof. If you are living in Westchester county, make sure you do visit us.
