Here we talk about the difficulty in shopping for a new laminate floor.
Four to five years ago if you decided on a new laminate floor, the choice would be simple. There were only three or four brands to choose from. Today, there are literally dozens of brands to choose from made by companies from all over the world. It is a confusing venture to say the least. If you want to shop for tile, wood flooring, carpet, or vinyl, you have the traditional qualities and ratings that help you decide which floor will best suit your needs. With laminate flooring, there are no ratings and it can be difficult.
Since this new age flooring has grown in popularity so quickly, it's been hard even for us who sell the product to weed out the good from the bad. New manufacturers and products are coming into the market at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, like with any product, the major factor that drives sales is price. I'm here to tell you that price should not be the absolute deciding factor when shopping for a laminate floor. A little advice that I can give you would be to try and shop within the group of major well known manufacturers. If you stay with one of the larger companies' products, at least if you do have a problem with the floor, they'll stand behind it. Some of these new products hitting the United States are manufactured by companies outside the U.S. and they have little or no representation here. If you have a problem, you may be stuck dealing with the local guy you bought it from. In some cases, the local person may not be able to do much for you and if he does, it might take a while. If you purchase one of these generic no name brands on the Internet, you're really on your own!
Another problem with shopping for laminate flooring is that most of the people you talk to in local stores, home centers, etc., don't even know what they're talking about. They might know their carpet, tile, or vinyl, but they're lost when it comes to laminate flooring. This problem in some cases goes back to the distributors and manufacturers. I've talked with representatives who handle certain products and they don't have a clue. In my opinion, the manufacturers should help educate the people who are out pushing their products and in turn, the distributors' reps should educate the sales people in the local stores. In a perfect world I'm sure this would work out fine.
The end result to all of this confusion is that the consumer suffers. In a lot of cases the consumer may end up with a floor that will not live up to their expectations. There are some good quality laminate floors out there and there are some really poor quality ones as well. We are trying to help potential customers by using our own rating system. See our Ratings Sections for more details.
One thing I can tell you for sure, which may be something you already know, is don't believe everything you read or everything you hear. I am directing this mainly towards the warranties on these products. The warranties on laminate flooring usually cover wear, stain, fade, and in some cases moisture damage. NONE of the warranties cover scratches! With that in mind, my advise is to go after the laminate floor with the best surface you can get for the money. A simple example is the 10 year warranty product versus the 15 year warranty product. Although there is only a difference of 5 years in the warranty, there is a major difference in the surface quality and construction. The simple truth is that the 10 year or "low end" products will scratch a lot easier than the 15 year or "standard quality" products. I would have to tell you that if you have a normal household, kids, pets, etc., there is no way that one of the lower end products will give you 10 years of life and still look good.
Another fact is that the installers get the same price to install a lower end product as they do to install a standard line. When you do the math I think you will find that in the long run the standard quality products are actually a much better value than the lower end products. Considering you will be replacing the low end product much sooner than the standard quality, it ends up that the standard quality product is actually less expensive!
