cost and performance comparison on hardwood flooring,engineered wood flooring & laminated flooring

Nowadays timber flooring available in the market is no longer limited to solid wood flooring, but rather the concept of a class, including many varieties of wood flooring. Currently in the building materials market, wood flooring mainly contains hardwood flooring, laminated flooring and engineered wood flooring, as well as some “other” floorings, such as cork flooring, bamboo flooring.

1）  Hardwood flooring —— in pursuit of comfort and enjoying Traditional solid wood flooring are still charming, drawn from natural wood, and the prices are different according to different wood species. In the process hardwood flooring does not require any bonding process, just processing by equipment. Commonly there are flat, tongue and groove, finger-jointed, integrated wood floors.

Solid wood flooring is more expensive, is the one of the high-end products. Price of Ash wood floors are about USD18 / sqm, while the precious wood species such as teak wood flooring is more than USD67 / sqm. Its advantage is that it feels good to walk with grades. But if not handled properly it will easily deform, requiring regular waxing, not easy to clean.

2）  Engineered wood flooring —— hard to deform Engineered wood flooring can be divided into multi-layer engineered wood flooring, three-layer engineered wood flooring, characterized by good dimensional stability.

Multi-layer engineered wood flooring use multilayer solid wood plywood as substrate, and then stick the precious wood mosaic panels with a certain thickness on the above or sliced ​​veneer sheets for the panel, and then through synthetic resin glue —— urea-formaldehyde resin or phenolic resin plastic hot pressing, and then processed into the floor.

As the name suggests, three-layer engineered wood flooring apart to see is composed of three layers, the surface with high-quality specifications of rare hardwood slats mosaic panels, the core layer with the fast-growing soft wood, the base layer with the fast-growing poplar wood or other hardwood. Three layers are through synthetic resin glue hot pressing, and then processed into the floor.

According to experts, engineered wood flooring are not easy to deform, prices are more expensive, generally 200 RMB / square meter or more.

3）  Laminate flooring  —— high wear-resisting

It is also three layers compressed, the surface with the impregnated decorative paper containing resistant materials melamine resin, the middle layer with medium and high-density fiberboard or particleboard, the bottom with the balance sheet impregnated with phenolic resin. Three layers are through synthetic resin glue hot pressing, with better wear resistance and dimensional stability.

Laminate flooring is due to the use of high-density substrate material taken from the fast-growing forests, 2-3 year old wood is broken into chips to make panels for using, in this sense, laminate flooring is the most environmentally friendly wood flooring. And because there is laminate flooring wear layer that can adapt to a more hostile environment, such as living room, hallway and the places people often walk around.

The disadvantage is that laminate flooring is usually only 8 mm thick, it seems not good as the first two elastic, the price is relatively cheap.