Real hardwood or Laminate, which is better?

A question often asked is "which would be better for me to buy, hardwood or laminate flooring?" It's a valid question for looking for a quality, durable floor for their home. It really depends on what the most important features are for you.

Let's take a look at hardwood flooring first. It generally comes in two different types, solid hardwood and engineered hardwood. The differences being pretty self explanatory, solid hardwood is just that - each plank is a solid piece of wood. Engineered hardwood is constructed much like plywood. It consists of numerous thin layers of wood, each layer being laid 90 degrees to the layers above and below it, with a finished layer on top. The layers are bonded together to form a strong plank.

One installed, you can't tell whether it is a solid wood or an engineered wood because all you can see is the finished top layer. I almost always recommend engineered hardwood because it is much more stable in the presence of moisture. Most engineered hardwood floors can be installed below-grade, whereas solid hardwood cannot.

Laminate flooring planks generally consists of a fiberboard core sandwiched between layers of plastic melamine with an additional wear-layer on the top. There are many variations to this formula, but that gives you a general idea of it's construction.

Now for the comparison. When it comes to scratches, overall wear and tear and ease of cleaning, the nod has to go to laminate flooring. It is definitely much more scratch resistant than hardwood. It is almost impossible to stain, and just plain takes a fair bit of abuse from foot traffic. In general the gloss level is lower than that of most hardwoods (There are exceptions though, because there are high-gloss laminates and low-gloss hardwoods available). Laminates are in general a bit lower in price than hardwoods.

Hardwood floors have a natural beauty that is hard to beat. I will have to say though, that the latest generation of laminates looks amazingly close to that of real hardwood. Despite the fact that hardwood does scratch easier than laminate, hardwood can be sanded and repaired in-place. Laminate cannot. Planks of laminate must be removed and replaced.

It's not always an easy question to answer. It pays to look at both to see whether you like the natural beauty of real wood, or the durability of laminate.