to not get why people are derogatory about laminate flooring

[mavornia]

After having a puker extraordinaire in ds1 and a good few splatterings from ds2, my bedroom carpet is quite frankly rank

I'm having it replaced with laminate flooring on Friday

I think it looks good and it will be delightfully easy to clean

so why are people so sniffy about it?! So much cleaner than carpet with children around and cheaper and easier to clean than real wood too

what am i missing?

I'm with knittedbreast on this one - there were laminate floors downstairs when we moved to the house we're in now - and they showed up every little spec of dirt, which was a complete PITA. And they chipped and broke really easily.

I think laminate floors look fine in newish houses, but our house was built around the turn of the century and 'perfect' smooth floors just didn't look right IMO.

We gradually replaced them all with carpets or wooden floors (sealed floor boards) which I am much happier with.

I had laminate in my bedroom and hated it.

When I was downstairs and DH was in the bedroom just getting stuff out of the wardrobe and the like, being normal it sounded as if he was stomping around in a bad mood.

The dust appeared from now where and looks mank pretty quick so you have to be on top of it all the time.
Ok I'm not a slattern but I only hoover the bedroom about twice a week but the laminate went dusty really quick.

It was also cold on the feet.
I put carpet down two years ago and I love it.

I hav solid wood in the kitche and dining areas and it is much warmer to feel than laminate.

Good quality laminate is fine and very practical. If I could afford real wood floorboards I would get them though. Carpet gets dirty so quickly, especially downstairs and you have to turn into the kind of person who insists on shoe removal at the door!

YANBU. Totally IKEA laminated the ground floor of my home after my cats brought home fleas one sunny weekend and we spent the next few weeks treating fleabites and spending ridiculous amounts of £££s to get rid of the springy little buggers. Couldn't stand the carpet after that & I couldn't afford real wood floors either. Picked the IKEA product because some friends installed it in their (heavy footfall) kitchen about 20 years ago and it's still looking pretty good.

Snobbery is still alive and well...

I agree a hard floor is much easier to keep clean and so is most suitable for kitchen, bathroom, utility, maybe the hall. You can get water-resistant grades that are suitable for bathrooms and kitchens and can be damp-mopped or have a dog's water bowl on them without warping and swelling.

However...
It is much noisier, especially for anyone underneath, so IMO is not a good choice for an upstairs room and DEFINITELY not for anyone who lives in a flat or has an active family who clumps about in shoes rather than just socks.

For anyone involved in plumbing or electrical work, laminate floors are the work of the devil. Homeowners are always saying "It's out of the question because I have laminate flooring"

As a matter of personal taste, I don't like fake floorboards. I am happy with solid or engineered flooring made of real wood. The tile effect laminates in a kitchen I don't mind.

I have an opinion that in a few years, laminate flooring will go the way of shag-pile carpet, lava-lamps, stone cladding, and plastic front doors.

I had a quote for oak flooring and I had to do my best polite face when the man told me the total :( Our carpet needs replacing due to it having strawberries, bananas and playdoh mashed into it. So laminate it is.

I've always hated laminate but some of the more expensive ones are not too bad. It's those horrible cheap ones that I hate, it was in our hallway when we moved in and we still haven't got around to replacing it. It's all faded around the window where the sun shines on it.

Out of interest, how much is really nice top of the range wooden flooring?

Why can I not say I don't like laminate flooring without being told I am a snob? Its a pathetic argument.

We have it in two rooms: can't wait for the day when we can afford to have the whole lot done.

I agree it does need to be a decent quality laminate. Mine looks like hard wood and looks as new as it did when I had it laid 7 years ago which is amazing with my 3 little thugs darlings!

It's worth investing in a good quality underlay too.

bibbity, I think it's because some people expect a full paragraph containing all the appropriate hedging (sometimes, IMO, not all, broadly, etc.) rather than short and to the point. My sympathy.

You might pay £30 per square metre for a solid timber which must be 18mm thick minimum. If you are going to do that them IMO you are better ripping up all the old flooring, and starting again from the joists (most often, new flooring is nailed on top of your old floor, which raises the level and is not a top job, especially if the old floor is chipboard, which is complete rubbish.

This does increase the labour content so it will be several days work to take up old, insulate and draught-proof the joists, and you have got to buy the timber in long planks, not those miniature carry-home packs you see in the DIY shed. This could add £500 or so in extra labour so it will not be cheap. However it will be a superlative job if done by a skilled man. It is also a good time to do any underfloor work such as insulating pipes, running cable for new sockets or TV, cleaning out airbricks, spraying for woodworm, clearing out dirt and rubble. You can put in a floorsafe or trapdoor if you want. If you are putting in an expensive wooden floor you have got to make sure there is no damp, or it will swell and warp; maybe even rot. It is not difficult to do all this if you have taken the old floor up and are starting with a clean slate.

I don't like the feel of laminate under my feet. I am a barefoot trundler, and all the laminate I have so far encountered doesn't feel good underfoot. I'll be sticking to carpets until I can afford to get boards sanded and treated.

edit

sorry, I was way out in my cost. I just looked up a sample retail price, at Wickes this solid oak oak floorboard is about £60/sq metre. A tradesman should be able to get a better deal at a local timber merchant.

am I allowed to post links? I am not trying to advertise or anything.
www.wickes.co.uk/solid-wood-flooring/invt/190133/

I have laminate in all four bedrooms, the landing, the office and the living room. It's decent quality, looks nice, and is very easy to clean.

I would suggest getting very good quality sound dampning underlay, which makes it quiet (I can't hear people walking around upstairs despite our 'open' ceiling) and which stops dust working it's way up from underneath the floor. It would be a little cold but we have underfloor heating throughout the house so it's fine.

Carpets are rank. Real wood needs maintaining every few years to keep it nice. Laminate is a good option. If it were not for the fact that we have a small child, we may have gone for flagstones throughout, but they are unforgiving to heads and dropped plates etc.

Laminate is practical, but not so pretty. That's all.
Once the kids are older we might get rid of ours and go for carpets.

i would love to have the kind of house where i could have lots of lovely warm carpet under foot...but i don't.
the only room without a door to the outside is the bathroom.

but w have carpet tile instead. warm enough, noiseless enough, very easy to clean. we have underfloor storage which is readily accessible. and we can continue tinkering with the plumbing. (i say we, i mean DH)

we didn't g for laminate because repeated wetting warps it, it blocks access ti th underfloor gubbins, and is harder to fit, noisier, and we couldn;t hav afforded really good engineered wood flooring anyway ( i hear stuff at £50 psqm is bloody great)

people don't like laminate because much of the stuff put down in this country was cheap and done to sell/let out houses.

I like it downstairs but wouldn't have it upstairs. Because it is noisy, slippy and a nightmare for dust balls going under beds/cupboards etc. It is better than carpet for cleaning but it needs doing every couple of days at least really. Sweeping.

Laminate flooring is just a photographed layer covered with a clear protection over the top of it. Inside it is fibre board glued and compressed, it can't be sanded if scratched, it is generally made with melamine resin which contains nasty formaldehyde and thus has health implications with chemicals leeching out over time.

IMHO much better to get a proper wood floor, stone or lovely fitted carpet and a Bissell/Vax etc carpet cleaner which will pay for themselves very quickly if your home is like ours with lots of children and dogs

Must disagree there MyLittleOwls, what you have described is cheap and nasty laminate flooring. For the better, but more expensive laminates, the top layer(s) is/are wood. In ours, there are several layers of wood, grain going in different directions so that it won't warp from the underfloor heating. Mine is good to be sanded 3mm or so should I need to (haven't in the many years it's been down).

I don't like cheap laminate because it looks too yellow and too shiny for me. Plus I think the cheaper it is, the sooner it needs replacing.

MIL has it in her house for about 3 years and parts are rising/chipping already.

I like the look of real wood / sanded floorboards, but the constant click click clicking of MuttDogs nails on MILs floor drive us insane within a week (plus she slips over when trying to chase EvilKillerCat and the cat laughs...)

We have oak floor in the kitchen and it is marvellous - warm underfoot, soft if you drop stuff/fall over and just gets better and better with age. I mop it all the time and it doesnt warp. When we re-seal it it looks stunning.

In the rest of the house we have stripped floorboards and rugs which I love BUT one year our cat got fleas and they got down the cracks in the floorboards in our bedroom and they took MONTHS to eradicate becasue I couldnt get the spray down the crack - everytime you put a hand near the floor they would jump out of the crack.

I didn't say you were a snob bibbity, I said snobbery is alive and well. Some people get all hoity-toity on hearing the word 'laminate' for no other reason than baseless prejudice. Not liking something based on experience is always a valid reason to reject, OTOH.

i have never liked it much (prefering real wood floors) but as both my current house and the one we are moving into have cement floors I think it will be laminate or Amtico this time downstairs as I am sick to death of cleaning the animal/children stains off the carpet. Not going for the cheap stuff though as my MIL has one you are not allowed to get wet!

We have v expensive laminate, looks just as good as my mother's wooden floor and is much more hardwearing. I love mine, would never go back to carpet.