Engineered Floors vs Laminate Floors
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Engineered Floors
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Laminate Floors
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Real wood Floors
Engineered wooden floors are made up of nothing but real wood that brings alive your home and gives you visually appealing true wooden floors. On the other hand the Laminate Floors are not wooden floors, these are just "printed pictures" of wood patterns and structures on chemically hardened paper. It shows the symptoms of real wood but fails to match any of its characteristics. Unlike engineered wood floors where each plank exhibits a unique design, the synthetic appearance of Laminate Floors produces the same pattern over and over again.
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Multilayer Construction
Engineered wooden floors have a robust 3 layer structure which makes it more stable and fit to use. The different layers being arranged at cross grain to each other imparting stability to the floor. However, Laminate Floors by virtue of their construction face the issue of cupping at the edges.
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Indoor Air Quality
The Engineered wooden floors are environment friendly and all the lacquers and stains used for them are water based, making these floors practically VOC free and healthy to live. On the other hand, Laminated Floors are usually made with a resin composed of melamine and formaldehyde. Formaldehyde emissions cause environmental and health concerns.
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Temperature Neutral
Engineered Wooden floors are made of Real Wood which is temperature neutral, allowing it to be used in most extreme cold climates whereas an imitation like a Laminate floor will not give the same result.
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Tender under foot
The soft feel of the modern floating wood floor make the floors especially good for an ageing population and even young children unlike the laminated floors which because of their synthetic construction have a coarse texture.
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Long Life
Mikasa Real wood floors are durable and come with a warranty of upto 30 years. These require minimal maintenance and need to be resanded and polished after about 10-12 years of usage. Laminate floors on the other hand have a shorter life and are easily prone to scratches with regular usage.