Laminate floors?
Hi, I’m looking for some feedback on laminate floors vs. wood. We are renovating a condo that currently has carpeting, and are considering laminate floors. One of the reasons I like the idea is because I would like continuity throughout the apt. and laminate floors will provide that because they can be installed in the…
Hi, I’m looking for some feedback on laminate floors vs. wood. We are renovating a condo that currently has carpeting, and are considering laminate floors. One of the reasons I like the idea is because I would like continuity throughout the apt. and laminate floors will provide that because they can be installed in the (open) kitchen.
Do you feel that this is cheap/cheesy?
Thanks for your feedback.
If you like laminate, use it – you’ll likely save money.
I don’t like it, I think it always looks cheap, and even if you don’t think it does when it it new, it will wear faster than wood and will eventually look cheap.
If you are concerned about resale value (i.e, the rest of your condo is very nice and not cheesy), then if I were you, I’d price the wood and consider installing it even if you are happy with laminate – if you do renovations with future selling costs in mind. (When I look at a place with laminate to buy, I mentally price in the cost of replacing it with wood, just as I do for carpeted floors.)
We will be using Armstrong’s Grand Illusions line of premium laminate due to our radiant floor heating….It is just under $4 a foot and it looks amazing!
Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, there is no wood floor underneath the carpet, so new floors are necessary.
I put Wilsonart laminate flooring in my finished basement ten years ago and it has really held up well, even after quite a few heavy floods. It’s starting to show wear and tear now but when it was first put down everyone initially thought it was real wood. Of course, real wood is preferable but I would choose high quality laminate over carpet any day. Maybe you should check to see if you have wood floors under the carpet that you could have refinished. You never know. Good luck.
Why can’t you put wood in the kitchen? I have it and it’s fine.
Do I feel that this is cheap/cheesy? Oh, yes, very much so.
I put down about 800 square feet of Pergo-like flooring in the kitchen of our old apartment and it stood up admirably through several years of large parties and heavy moving across it. Sure wood is nice but much more expensive to buy and maintain. The Pergo looked nice, cleaned up REALLY easily and seemed to me anyways to be pretty sturdy. If your goal in redoing the floor is to be able to point at it and see ‘that’s real oak’ then do that, but if you just want a nice looking floor the laminate stuff is pretty good.
It really depends on the type you use. The really expensive types look pretty good …not as good as real wood but you can get away with it in small spaces where you need something that can tolerate some moisture. I used one that looked like large planks and it had real texture and grooves. Easy to put down but not cheap. The cheaper stuff looks tacky and more importantly, wears really badly.
Keep in mind that over large spaces the repeating pattern in laminate becomes more noticeable.
Why can’t you use wood throughout? Wood can be used in a kitchen provided its installed and coated properly.