Laminate is widely used material, which can be found in most buildings today. But what is laminate in fact and what is the difference between laminate flooring and hardwood flooring?
Laminate flooring is the multilayered floor covering, made mainly of sawdust, glue, and tape. Unfortunately laminated wood does not have the structure that can be seen, this is nothing but a picture above the lower layer.
Because laminate is decorative coating and it is stacking in a “floating” way, it must be placed under the substrate. This, in turn, allows us to lay laminate flooring without compromising on quality.
There are widely available finishing materials such as laminate and parquet in stores of building materials. To select one of the options, you need to know what is wood laminate or parquet, their qualities, similarity and differences, the main features, pros and cons.
And laminate and parquet board are made of layers, but the structure of the series is different.
Laminate ingredients:
- The protective layer;
- The laminating film made of the decorative paper;
- The paper layer impregnated with special resins;
- The basis of particleboard or wooden fibrous block;
- Cardboard impregnated with paraffin or plastic.
Laminated coating has an artificial origin. The elements are connected by pressing. During this process the adhesive is not used. So this is a high pressure laminate.
Parquet board is a natural type of floor covering, since its production use natural wood.
The composition of hardwood board:
- The top layer is made of valuable species of trees;
- The medium layer is made of coniferous slats;
- The bottom layer – plywood.
To connect all the layers, adhesive and hydraulic press are used. At the completion the upper layer is coated with oil or varnish.
More reliable and durable types of laminate flooring will cost as much as the wooden floor. In addition, despite of the appearance on the market, different building materials of high quality laminate in their characteristics do not concede, and something even surpassing the wooden floorboard, such materials will not be able to brag about their availability.
Of course, one advantage of laminate is the ease of assembly, simplicity of maintenance and versatility. Various types of modern laminate boards with excellent accuracy may copy pattern characteristic of different types of wood. However, the imitation of the highest quality is only an imitation.
The name “laminate” means not only the traditional panels made of wood board surface coated with a decorative pattern and protective coating. Today this group includes panels made from other materials.
The emergence of a new generation of materials began due to the fact that the usual laminate, despite all its positive qualities, has one serious drawback – the lack of water resistance.
Waterproof plastic laminate is the type of flooring that does not look different from the usual one, but the layers of wood are replaced with polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Base PVC does not absorb water, swell or deform, which may occur with other panels. It is used in the decoration of any premises for flooring or walls. Most often water-resistant plastic slats are laid in places where humidity is high.
