Laminate flooring, honestly rated.

Laminate flooring is a photograph under armour

Laminate is a four-layer board and the layers are easy to picture. On top sits a transparent wear layer of melamine resin impregnated with aluminium oxide, which is a ceramic abrasive hard enough to be used on sandpaper. Under that is the decor layer, a printed paper carrying the wood or stone image. Under that is the structural heart of the board: a high density fibreboard core, wood fibre compressed with resin under enormous pressure. A balancing backer on the underside stops the board curling.

Two things follow from that construction, and they explain almost everything about how laminate behaves. The aluminium oxide surface is exceptionally hard, so laminate resists scratching better than nearly anything else in a plank format. The HDF core is compressed wood, so water is its natural enemy. Everything else on this page is a consequence of those two facts.

AC ratings, and why they are the only spec that matters first

Laminate has something no other flooring category offers a homeowner: a published, independently tested abrasion standard. The AC rating runs from AC1 to AC5 and it tells you what the surface was actually tested against, not what a brochure hopes you will assume.

Two boards can look identical, cost within a few percent of each other and sit two AC classes apart. If a product will not state its AC rating, that silence is the answer.

Why laminate out-scratches most vinyl

This surprises people who assume the more expensive category must be tougher across the board. It is not. Aluminium oxide in a cured melamine matrix is harder than the urethane-coated vinyl on a luxury vinyl plank, and the difference shows up exactly where you would expect: dog claws, dragged chair legs, grit tracked in from a driveway, castors on a desk chair.

Where laminate loses is impact and water. The HDF core is stiff but brittle compared with a vinyl core, so a dropped cast iron pan is more likely to chip a laminate edge than dent it. And water is not a fair fight at all, which is why a kitchen with a dishwasher and a household that mops slowly is usually a luxury vinyl plank job instead.

The seam problem, and what water-resistant is really promising

Every laminate floor has thousands of linear feet of joint. The wear layer stops at each of those joints, and behind it is compressed wood fibre. Water that sits on the surface finds a joint, wicks into the core and swells it. That swelling is permanent, it shows as a raised lip along the seam, and it cannot be sanded, filled or flattened.

The industry answer has been better joint geometry, wax or paraffin treatments on the profile, and core recipes with water-repellent additives. It works, and modern boards genuinely survive spills that would have ruined a floor from twenty years ago. But read the claim precisely. Water-resistant normally means surface water can sit for a stated period, often twenty-four or seventy-two hours, before damage. Waterproof in laminate marketing almost always still means the core is wood fibre and the warranty excludes standing water, subfloor moisture and anything described as a flood.

So we install laminate confidently in living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, hallways, offices and finished basements with a tested slab. We are cautious in kitchens and will say so. We do not install it in full bathrooms, laundry rooms or mudrooms that see melting snow every day.

Underlayment does more than you think

A floating floor is a drum unless you stop it being one. The underlayment is the single biggest lever on how a laminate floor sounds and feels, and it is also where corners get cut invisibly.

A basic closed-cell foam sheet costs almost nothing and does almost nothing beyond covering minor texture. A dense rubber or fibre acoustic underlayment costs several times more and changes the character of the room: less footfall noise transmitted downward, less hollow resonance in the room itself, and a floor that feels solid rather than springy. In an upstairs room or an apartment, this is not a luxury, it is often a condition of the building.

Over a concrete slab there is a second job to do. The underlayment either includes a vapour barrier or one goes down separately, lapped and taped. Attached-pad boards make that decision for you and are not always the right call, because you lose the ability to choose the acoustic performance independently.

How we install it

Flattening and moisture

We straightedge the subfloor and correct humps and hollows outside the product's tolerance. Laminate joints are strong in tension and weak in flex, so a board bridging a hollow will work its joint loose over months. On concrete, we take moisture readings before anything is unwrapped. Both of those steps are described in more detail on our subfloor preparation page.

Acclimation and layout

Boxes come into the room and sit long enough to settle to the room's temperature and humidity. We then dry-lay across several cartons to spread the pattern repeat, because laminate uses a limited number of unique board images and a lazy install puts two identical boards side by side in the middle of the room where everyone sees them. Start row and direction follow the longest sightline and the main light source, not the nearest wall.

Expansion, and the things that pin a floor

An expansion gap runs around the entire perimeter and around every fixed object: door jambs get undercut so the board slides beneath them, pipes get a collar, hearths and posts get their own gap. Long or L-shaped runs get an expansion break rather than a continuous field that has nowhere to go. Nothing heavy and fixed sits on top of the floor, which means cabinetry and islands are installed first and the laminate stops at the toe kick.

Transitions and trim

Every doorway and change of material gets a proper transition profile sized to allow movement, not a strip of moulding covering a bad cut. Base or shoe moulding is fixed to the wall, never through the floor, because a nail through a floating floor pins it as effectively as a cabinet does.

You cannot refinish it, so plan for that

A hardwood floor is a consumable surface over a solid asset: sand it, restain it, get another twenty years. Laminate is not that. The decor layer is a printed paper, and once traffic wears through the melamine into it, the image is gone and there is nothing underneath but brown fibreboard.

That is not a defect, it is the deal. You get a harder surface for less money, and in exchange the floor has a defined life and a replacement date instead of a renewal cycle. If the ability to refinish rather than replace matters to you, that is a straightforward argument for hardwood and worth paying for.

Bevels, texture and format

Edge treatment is the most visible spec choice you will make. A square edge gives an almost continuous surface and reads modern, but any lippage between boards is obvious and it hides nothing. A micro-bevel puts a tiny painted chamfer on the long edges, which defines each board and quietly disguises small height differences. A full four-sided bevel outlines every board on all four edges for the most plank-like look, and collects more dust in the grooves.

Surface texture is separate from the print. Smooth is the cheapest and the least convincing under raking light. Embossed adds a generic grain feel. Embossed in register aligns the physical texture with the printed grain so that the knot you can see is also the knot you can feel, and it is the single upgrade that most changes whether a laminate floor reads as wood from standing height.

On format, wider and longer boards mean fewer seams and a calmer room. They also demand a flatter subfloor, because a long stiff board reveals every deviation it spans.

Living with it

• Sweep or vacuum on a hard-floor setting. Grit is the only thing that meaningfully attacks an aluminium oxide surface.
• Damp mop, wrung out properly, with a laminate-specific cleaner. Never wet mop and never let water pool at a seam.
• No steam mops, ever. Driving hot vapour into a joint is the fastest way to swell an HDF core.
• Skip wax, polish and oil soaps. They cannot bond to melamine and leave a haze that dulls in traffic lanes.
• Felt pads under everything, soft wide castors on chairs, and a mat at every exterior door.
• Wipe spills promptly. The water-resistance rating is a safety margin, not a licence.

When laminate is the wrong call

Wet rooms rule it out. A full bathroom, a laundry, a mudroom in a snow region or a basement with a slab that failed its moisture test all point to tile or luxury vinyl plank, both of which are indifferent to standing water in a way laminate will never be. Bedrooms where warmth and sound absorption matter more than surface hardness are a better fit for carpet. And if you want the floor to be an asset you renew rather than replace, hardwood is the only category on this site that offers that.

The flooring comparison lines all five up against each other if you would rather see the trade-offs together. When you have a room list, send it over and we will price it properly. Our flooring installation page explains how a job actually runs, from measure through to the last piece of trim.

Laminate questions we hear most