- A good, pre-finished hardwood floor and a laminate floor of comparable quality cost roughly the same in terms of the planks themselves---somewhere between $3 and $7 per square foot, as of 2009. Additional materials for laminate flooring are more expensive, because they include special foam underlayment, while hardwood can be laid directly on a plywood subfloor. But laminate has an advantage in labor costs. A hardwood floor requires extensive preparation, and a day or two of professional installation, unless you're a capable do-it-yourselfer. You can install a laminate floor in an afternoon, with tools you probably have around the house.
- One of the selling points of laminate flooring is the simplicity of the preparation. The padding that holds the laminate can lay directly on any smooth, solid, non-carpeted floor surface, including wood floors, tile or cement, without nails or adhesive. After the floor trim is removed from the bottom of the walls, you just roll the foam padding out over the surface in rows, taping it together with plastic tape.
For hardwood flooring, you need a solid, bare underlayment of plywood, which means any previous wood floor or tile floor has to come up. You then top the plywood with felt paper before installing the flooring itself. - Both laminate and hardwood flooring fit together with a tongue-and-groove system. Laminate flooring pieces snap tightly and stay together with no nailing or adhesive. With hardwood floors, the planks have be secured to the floor with a pneumatic floor nailer that drives the planks tightly together, while nailing them to the subfloor.
- Both types of flooring are cut using basic saws, depending on which kind of cut you need: miter saws for straight or angled cuts at the ends of the planks, table saws for length-cuts alongside walls, and jigsaws for corner cuts. Both types of flooring expand and contract with climate, so in both cases, you have to leave a 1/4-inch gap at the edges of the room, alongside the walls, which is then covered with floor trim.
- A properly maintained hardwood floor can last virtually forever. Proper care includes re-coating with polyurethane gloss every few years. You will need to replace a laminate floor within about 20 years, no matter how well you treat it. If a wood floor is seriously damaged in one area, it can be patched and refinished there, while a laminate floor will have to be completely replaced. Neither floor handles moisture or flooding well.
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