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Pros and Cons of Wood Laminate Flooring

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If you are working on home renovations, you might decide to replace your current flooring. When you want the look of wood, but don't want the cost and other drawbacks of real hardwood, wood laminate is the next best thing. It is important to understand both the advantages and disadvantages so you can decide if wood laminate is the best option for your home.

Pro: It provides a consistent, attractive wood look

With wood laminate flooring, you are getting an attractive hard flooring option that looks like real wood, but is even more uniform. This is great if you don't want any imperfect pieces of wood or weird grain patterns that stick out like a sore thumb. In that respect, some people prefer laminate not just because of the lower cost, but because of the lack of defects in each piece.

Con: You can't refinish wood laminate

Unfortunately, if your wood laminate floor gets wear on the top layer, you won't be able to simply refinish it and keep the laminate planks as-is. You need to replace any pieces of wood laminate that have damage. If you were to go with real hardwood flooring, you can sand, refinish and stain the pieces so that they look new without actually having to replace them.

Pro: You can install it over other flooring

If you currently have a layer of plywood or other hard flooring surface like linoleum, you don't have to pull it up to install the wood laminate flooring. These flooring materials can go directly on top of just about any hard flooring surface as it is sometimes known as a floating floor. This reduces the amount of time and labour costs if you install it professionally and makes it easier on you if you install it yourself.

Con: It won't help with your home's resale value

With wood laminate flooring, you save money, but you don't add to the value of your home. While the flooring might look better to prospective home buyers than carpet or other flooring materials, the actual resell value of your home remains the same. If you want to get more for your home, you might prefer hardwood flooring as an investment.

Pro: Wood laminate is easy to take care of

Keeping wood laminate clean is as easy as sweeping it and mopping it on a routine basis. You don't have as much of a worry about it getting wet as you do with hardwood, though you do want to be careful with spills or mopping with too much water. You should never need to apply wax to this flooring.


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