Pre Padding on Laminate = Quiet?
Being on a budget I am considering buying 12mm Laminate flooring with 3mm pre-padding attached. I want to make sure there is not much noise for the tenant in the apartment below me. I understand that extra padding is not recommended because the laminate can come apart with such a soft underlayment. Cork seems another…
Being on a budget I am considering buying 12mm Laminate flooring with 3mm pre-padding attached. I want to make sure there is not much noise for the tenant in the apartment below me. I understand that extra padding is not recommended because the laminate can come apart with such a soft underlayment. Cork seems another option but it is expensive and I’ve heard that it also might be soft underfoot. Is 3mm padding usually enough for sound dampening? I’ve also heard that laminate floors have a hollow sound when walked on.
The padding will cut down on noise, but it’s not a cure all…it’s not going to eliminate noises, just reduce them. You can compare sound reducing paddings by looking at their STC (sound transmission coefficient). The higher the number, the more effective it will be. There are a variety of thin products, made from foam, rubber, etc. that will have varying efficiency, so make sure you’re choosing the one with the highest STC. These would not be pre-attached to the floor, but you just roll them out and then put down the floor on top of them.
I’ve never done laminate flooring, but have done a number of installation of engineered flooring (similar, but w/ real wood wear layer), and for the floor itself…12mm is very thin. I’d recommend gluing this down, not installing it as a floating floor. If you were to do a floating installation, any irregularities in the subfloor will men that the floor isn’t sitting tight on the subfloor, and that’s where you get the hollow feeling…and you’ll see the floor shifting up and down when someone’s walking by. Gluing the floor down will eliminate this, but you should still make sure the subfloor is as flat as possible, and read the installation instructions carefully.