An alternative view from someone who has lived with laminate for a while (Laminate Flooring)

Member Name: valve90210

Product:	Laminate Flooring
Date:	29/07/08 (829 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks nice

Disadvantages: Requires much more cleaning, can be damaged easily, slippery when wet.

Although I have not laid any laminate flooring so am unable to comment on the ease of use etc, I have now lived in two places where there has been a substancial amount of it.

The first was when I was at university, in my third year I shared a house with two other people. The house was like something straight out of an Ikea catalogue, it looked very modern and nice. This included laminate flooring in almost the entire downstairs area. It looked really nice and gave a good impression when you first saw it. Although it looked really nice, we found it a real chore to keep clean as dust which would normally be trapped by carpet and vacuumed away easily, tends to gather at the edges of rooms and become very visible. At the time I put it down to the fact we were students, so the house was often busy with people and with the hours of work we were doing (which were huge) we didn't get to cleaning the house very often.

The second place is in the flat I live in with my girlfriend, who was really pleased with the laminate when she first saw it as she really liked the look of it. I was not so sure due to my experiences at university but decided we should give it a go because the place was going to be a lot less busy than the student house, and with it being our own place we would be cleaning it much more frequently so hopefully the problems of dust gathering would not be so bad.....I was wrong.

As nice as the laminate flooring is to look at, I really feel it is a nightmare to try to keep clean. I swear I could sweep and mop the floor every morning and evening and still within a couple of hours there would be enough dust about for it to need doing again! You might wonder why we sweep and mop rather than just using a vacuum, well the answer is simple, our vacuum is not suitable for laminated flooring, it is very much designed for carpets of all thickness and is too harsh to be used on soft laminate floors as the brushes will scratch them. Yes we could change the vacuum for something else but as we are just setting up a home, it's an expensive time, and having got hold of a very very good vacuum (which is wonderful on carpet...and hence will be very useful if we move and there is carpet) for a great price we don't really want to spend anymore on another one.

That actually leads me onto my second gripe about laminate flooring, the possibility of damage.... This is less of a problem for expensive type of flooring than for the cheaper slot together stuff you can get from diy shops, but lets face it, that is what most people will use as it's a much more cost effective way of having a wood effect floor. The problem is that if you're not very careful, it can be quite easy to cause damage to the flooring, whether it be scratches, dents/cracks or liquid damage if something is spilt and seeps into the joins, which can cause the flooring to swell or bubble etc.If you do damage the flooring, it can be very difficult to sort it out.

The other things which I don't like are the fact that it can be very slippery if something is spilt, which can be dangerous particularly for children or the elderly. And, much more minor, the fact that in the winter is really cold under your feet, give me a nice warm snug carpet under my feet any day.

My conclusion would be that, yes the flooring does look very nice, it does also have downsides that people may not have thought about. If you are prepared for the extra cleaning which you will need to do to keep it looking clean and to stop dust building up, and know you will be careful enough to not cause any damange etc then go for laminate, me....I'm saving for new carpets.

Summary: Give me a nice carpet over this any day!!!