Considering buying engineered wooden flooring for your home? If not, you definitely should. Engineered wooden flooring is a little bit of everything: durable, attractive, and inexpensive. Check out the competing products before you buy engineered wood floors, or any flooring, though. Those competitors would be laminate wooden flooring, and solid wooden floors.
Looks
Direct comparisons between solid wood floors and engineered wooden flooring don\’t always make sense. After all, the part of engineered wood flooring that you step on is solid wood. Engineered often looks a lot more realistic than laminate, mainly because it is. From the same outlet, and sometimes the same manufacturer, you can often purchase a laminate wood floor which is very obviously fake, and one that actually looks better than either a real or an engineered wood floor, although it still won\’t actually be real, but merely a picture. Between solid and engineered wooden flooring, though, it\’s tough to say that one looks better than the other, until they begin to show wear.
Did You Hear That?
Don\’t discount the importance of sound when choosing wooden flooring. For the most part, the floor doesn\’t get a lot of attention except as something to step on, but when it makes a disturbing noise, the attention it receives is not really wanted. Although most people don\’t even think about it, the easiest way to tell the difference between the three is often by sound. The hollow clunk that is characteristic of laminate wooden floors is a dead giveaway. Many laminate manufacturers swear up and down that this is no longer an issue. A solid wooden floor, though, is quite solid and silent. Well, that is, until it begins to creak. Although professionals do have ways to minimize it, pretty all solid wood floors will face a creak or two, or maybe more, which is an issue that laminate mostly can\’t develop. Engineered wooden floors could possibly creak, and might have a slightly hollow sound, but nether will be nearly as pronounced. Creaking in engineered flooring is somewhat rare, but possible. I guess, when comparing engineered wooden flooring to solid wooden floors, you just have to decide if which possibility bothers you most, or which brand you trust to not have these issues.
Damage Control
When it comes to durability, the solid wooden floor is king. Even if it becomes damaged, simply buff and refinish. It\’s really that simple. Engineered wooden flooring shares this trait, but only to a degree. Because the top layer is rather thin, it can only be sanded a few times. This means that regular, deep gouges or scuffing may end up causing you to have to replace boards. This is still better than laminate, though, which cannot be sanded at all.
Comparing Prices
You\’ll find, when pricing engineered wooden flooring, as well as solid wooden floors, that there\’s no telling what the prices are going to be from month to month. Wood is a natural product, so availability plays a huge role in prices. Solid wooden floors are worse about this than engineered since engineered uses some processed materials, and laminate is generally more stable than the other two, unless a factory explodes or something. All other things being equal, solid wood floors are usually a lot more expensive than either of the other two, and engineered wooden flooring is generally a touch pricier than laminate.
Want to learn more about wooden flooring? Check out Wooden Flooring Info.
