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Choosing between laminate floors and real wood floors
By Franklyn Gallup of woodfloorist.com
I have been in the wood flooring industry for over 35 years. Part of that time I worked as an associate in the flooring departments of both Lowe's and Home Depot. Often people would come in already SOLD on Pergo or other laminate flooring. It was just a matter of picking out the style and color. It didn't matter to me which they purchased as I was working hourly but I did want to know that they made an educated decision with their purchase. My first question was WHY they had decided to buy Pergo. Almost always it was cost. The perception was real wood floors were more expensive than laminate flooring. The "box stores" usually have the laminates on one side of the isle and real wood flooring down the other side of the same isle. This made it very easy to show that they were very close in price. Often the laminate was more expensive. Actually, I had problems selling laminate flooring because I had done real wood floors for so long when I first started working for Home Depot. I came to realize that is it really just hard wall to wall carpet. Since I had no problem selling carpet I had no problem selling laminates so long as the customer knew what the were buying. Once I had shown that they were similarly priced the question often was, "OK, so what is the difference?" I used to love this. I would stand in the middle of the isle and point to the real wood floors and say, "Real Christmas trees" and then point to the laminates and say, "Artificial Christmas trees. Now they have been making artificial Christmas trees for well over 50 years and yet people still go out and buy real Christmas trees every year. Why is that??" I would just wait till I saw the "light" come on. When people understood my rhetorical question and were open to considering real wood floors. Uniqueness
Laminate flooring is a picture of wood floors glued to high density particle board with a melamine layer over the picture. The pattern repeats every 7 boards or so. Real wood flooring has each board with a unique fingerprint. Each board is unique . Once laminate flooring is damaged it needs to be either replaced or you live with the damage. Value
Real wood floors add value to your home. Laminate flooring adds as much as carpeting which is zero. Ask someone who is not trying to sell you flooring for an objective opinion here. Real Estate agents are good people to ask. Warranty
Real wood floors don't usually come with a warranty. They don't need to as they have a proven track record. There are real wood floors that are made very much like the real wood floors that are sold today in Europe that are over 500 years old. Laminate floors NEED a warranty often 25 years. They are relatively new. Structural
Real wood floors add structural strength to your home. The wood flooring spanning the joists adds strength to the subfloor. Since laminate floors are floating floors they add no structural strength. With all that said some people still wanted laminate flooring and I gladly sold it to them. There are many places where laminates are better than real wood floors. Installing over concrete is one such application. Installing a floor covering in a temporary residence or where there is very little clearance for the height of real wood floors. I had several customers who actually came back to thank me personally for helping them make the decision to buy real wood floors. |
 
A church floor I refinished in Annandale, VA
An Old wood floor I restored in Georgetown, Washington, DC
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Thanks for sharing.
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I did not realize that real wood floors add structural strength to a home. Very interesting...wish I had chose wood and not the laminate.
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