Jarra vs. Laminate floating floor boards

[Karina]

We are also in the process of getting floorboards in our place. I've looked at heaps and one thing I've noticed is that the laminate ones are more slippery than polished solid wood floorboards and engineered wood floorboards. With laminate (I'm assuming youre refering to the melamine/plastic type where the wood grain is 'printed' on and it comes in big tiles that you click together), you cant sand/polish it if it does get damaged and you need to fix it up (yeah its quite tough so this is unlikely, but you never know). Apparenly if it gets scratched or damaged, you can get a "touch up" kit for it though. A good thing about a laminate floor is that its less affected by weather changes (humidity etc). Depending on the quality of your laminate floor, some actually do scratch really easily, so if you do go for this option dont just get the cheapest one, go for a better quality one.The laminate ones seem to be a bit noisier to walk on than solid wood though.

I think the solid wood ones look beautiful, and I dont find them as noisy to walk on as laminate floors. You could also look at bamboo floorboards. Bamboo grows like a weed so its great in terms of sustainability, and its pretty strong too.. just as strong, if not stronger than some of the hardwood ones you can get (eg Jarrah). We're looking at getting either engineered or bamboo floorboards. purely for the fact that they last longer and they just feel and look more real and less plasticky (I'm a bit of a wood freak and my personal prefernce is real wood). We currently have solid wood parquetry underneath our carpets, but when I lifted the carpet the boards look all trashed and apparently they arent up to scratch with Building Code requirements (hence why they were covered with carpet in the first place, by previous owners).