5 Simple Steps to Choose The Right Laminate Flooring

5 Simple Steps to Choose The Right Laminate Flooring

Today, there are many laminate flooring brands surfacing in the consumer market. This is especially good for the consumers because they could pick the best laminate floor out of their many choices. Picking the right laminate floor is very crucial today because you will be living with the laminate floors for long term. A wrong choice in laminate flooring will incur long term costs in terms of health and maintenance. 

Here are your 5 Simple Steps to Choose The Right Laminate Floor:

1. Think Health

As mentioned earlier, you and your children are going to live with the laminate floor for the next five, ten years or even forever. Other than the floor must look good to you, it must be healthy to you. During the 90s, research has found out that there is a relatively higher formaldehyde emission from low end laminate floors than higher end laminate floors. Formaldehyde can cause deterioration to long term health especially to young children whom have lower immune system. Choosing laminate floors with ISO standards of low formaldehyde emission is the best choice if you are thinking long term. Tarkett & Parador are two laminate flooring brands which are tested and known for having the lowest & zero formaldehyde emission. 

2. Think Safety

Good grades laminate flooring usually will have grooves and texture for 2 purposes such as giving a real wood texture and also slip resistance. Other than prevent slipping, high end laminated wood floors will usually have fire resistance certification. They are tested (using fire to burn) that they will not be able to contribute to the development of a fire should such accident occur. 

3. Think Price

This doesn't mean that cheapest laminate flooring is good nor the most expensive laminate flooring should be better as well. Today consumers are looking at what is the probability and possibility of long term maintenance cost for the floors. Price should be viewed as long term. Choosing the laminate floor, we need to look to see whether there is high moisture resistance or not especially if you are staying in a humid environment such as Singapore and South East Asia. Laminate floors with low moisture resistance will tend to swell or warp in about 3 years or even months. The other thing to consider is whether they have higher resistance to heavy impact and abrasion. Low end laminate flooring surface tend to be torn or wore out easily. Especially if you lay on a commercial area such as retail shops, where there is high human traffic, changing a new set of laminate floors will be so frequent that the cost eats up a huge portion in your business expense.

4. Think Comfort

You can't see what's inside a laminate floor board but you will be able to feel it. Most lower end laminate floors have little amount of density which resulted into a hollow sound whenever you walk on it. Making your floor noisy whenever someone walk on it. On the other hand, you must also check if the flooring brand has thermal stability. What it means will such floor store heat unnecessary causing your floor to be hot. Good laminate flooring brands such as Parador & Tarkett have been consistently developing better laminate flooring to improve walking comfort for their end users.

5. Think Green

As we are getting busy with our work and our lives, sometimes we may or may not have overlooked our environment. Moreover, as laminate flooring demand increases, profit thinking businessmen around the world began to massively produce laminate floorboards which do not meet worldwide environmental standards. Although saving the environment seems like a enormous mission for us, if every person did their little part by being Eco-Friendly, our generations will benefit from our actions. Choose the laminate floor brand with environmental ISO standards such as FSC or Singapore Green Label to do your part in the Eco era.

Knowing these 5 basic steps, you will be better equipped in choosing the best laminate flooring brand for you, your family and your workplace.

(This article is extracted from Evorich official website)