One of the few things that catch your eye when you walk into any house is the flooring. Flooring style and design has a central role to play on the overall look of any room. Primarily, due to the extended wall to wall stretch of the area that it covers. Owing to this reason most people take great care in deciding what flooring type would best suit them. Out of the many available flooring options we will be discussing the three most common flooring types for comparison purposes.
Hardwood Flooring
Installation:
As the name suggests real wood is used as the basic flooring material in these types of floors. High quality wood is used in these types of floors and cedar wood is among the most preferred wood type. The installation of these wood floors requires specials skills and it is best if the installation is done by a professional hardwood flooring installer. Another technical aspect of these floors is that they require subfloor preparation before installation of the hardwood flooring. The quality of wood floors largely depends on how good the subfloor preparation is done.
Maintenance:
These floorings need to be maintained regularly with processes such as sanding, oiling and waxing, preferably by a hardwood flooring installer. Over extended period of usage these tend to lose their original hue and color but can be treated for refinishing.
Wood floors can cost 10- 20 USD per square foot but may cost more for higher qualities.
Laminate Flooring
Installation:
These flooring products basically use four layers of different materials bound together. The top layer is high quality scratch proof transparent plastic followed by a design layer which is the photographic paper carrying the image or design. The third layer is core layer made of high quality fiber board and the last layer known as the base layer is of melamine. Installation of laminate flooring in Virginia is relatively easier as compared to wood floors as most laminate flooring products are the click together floating type.
Maintenance:
These floorings do not need much maintenance and just sweeping or an occasional mop would do. However once they complete their warranted life span they cannot be treated for reconditioning and the only available option is a replacement.
This flooring type can cost 5-12 USD per square foot depending on its quality.
Installation:
This is a cheap alternate to hardwood flooring and uses solid wood as the top layer with layers of plywood pressed and glued together to form different thicknesses of the product. The main benefit of this type of flooring is that it can laid as a floating install on almost all types of existing floors including vinyl and cement. Another benefit of engineered wood flooring is that you get to enjoy the looks of real Maryland wood floors at a fraction of the cost.
Maintenance:
These floorings also need occasional touchups for maintenance; however they are more susceptible to moisture damage. Proper care should be taken to avoid furniture scratches and fluid spills.
This flooring type can cost 1- 5 USD per square foot depending on the quality.
