Everybody’s heard something about hardwood and laminate flooring, but unless you’re a builder, a designer or a contractor it is easy to get confused and not know the difference before choosing one of them for your home. Although it is easy to hire a hardwood flooring Atlanta Company for the job, you might want to know why is better to choose hardwood over laminate flooring. So here is some information that sheds light on the pros and cons in terms of longevity, durability, appearance, repair and maintenance.

To start with, before employing a hardwood flooring Atlanta business to complete the project, it might be useful to know that there is a huge difference between solid hardwood flooring and an engineered one. The first type of planks is produces from a single piece of wood and can be bought prefinished or unfinished. They are almost exclusively produced from deciduous tree species, meaning the ones that shed their leaves in the cold season. Engineered hardwood flooring is made out of several wood or plywood layers and laminate flooring is made out of multi-layers of synthetic product, meaning melamine resin and fiber board material. The latter just imitates the appearance of real wood.

Compared to hardwood flooring, laminated one has a pretty short life-span. If you ask your hardwood flooring Atlanta contractor he’ll tell you that laminate flooring will need replacing in maximum 20 years, sometimes even earlier, depending on how you maintain it. Because this type of floors can’t be refinished or sanded, the surface scratches and damages that occur with time will eventually destroy the flooring. On the other hand, engineered or solid hardwood floors, although they are a bit more expensive, they last between 40 to 80 years. Unlike the laminate one, if the hardwood flooring is sufficiently worn down, it can be refinished and sanded up to six or seven times. The engineered one can be subjected to this process just up to four times. When you decide to dispose of a hardwood or engineered flooring you can easily recycle it without damaging the environment.

In terms of appearance the difference between the two of them is more than obvious. Wood’s first quality is a variation in texture of the wood grain, unlike laminate where the patterns are printed on the planks. Real wood, solid or engineered, will always look better than laminate because it has an authentic, unique pattern that cannot be copied in its entirety.

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