Jarra vs. Laminate floating floor boards

We are in the process of arranging floor coverings for a 14 metre long passage, that is the hub of the house.

The flooring guy told me that we would be much better for us to get good quality ie. $80.00 dollars a square metre laminate floating floors, as oposed to the wooden type, as high heels dint the wood, and they are quite suseptible to scratching.

Oh no, two of my friends have the wood, now I am in two minds, my friends do not have there's in a main hallway, more in "good rooms" as such.

Has anyone got good quality laminate floating floor boards, that were profesionally fitted, or if you went for wood, why did you do so ?

Thanks so much for any replies :p

We've got beech coloured floating floors which hubby installed himself. We paid something like $60-70 per sqm. They have a nice shine to them. You have to look after them really carefully as they scratch easily. We have a few scratch marks which i am really peeved about because of the dogs. I guess all timber will scratch and dint no matter if it is floating floors or timber.

My advice would be not to go for a dark Jarra colour as you can see the dust on them when the light hits them. My friend has dark coloured timber installed and she regrets it as they need a clean almost daily.

I agree about the dark coloured wood. We had it when I was a kid and my mother hated the way it showed dust.

Lamnate flooring is good, I like the look of it and it's easier to maintain than floorboards. However you have to be really careful not to spil liquid on them as they can warp.

Hi,

My husband and I are currently building our house and we are having floating laminate floors. My parents have proper wooden floor boards in their house which cost them close to $12k and they do dent ver easily. We cant wear any type of heals on the floors otherwise we leave massive marks on it.

My nanna has laminate floors and they are a lot firmer and harder to damage than the real thing. Thats why we decided to go with them

Hope this helps you.

Amy ;)

We built a house 3 years ago and we layed Karndean Vinyl Planks, they look fantastic everyone comments on our floor all the time. They are hard wearing and dont dint or warp. They can get scratched but you would have to drag furniture across it to do so. In a hall way would be fine.
We have a reddish colour but you can get a few different colours, we are on an acre and dont have any grass so a lot of dirt and dust comes into the house which does show up on the floor, if I could do it again I would have gone for a lighter colour. In saying that though, they are very easy to clean just a sweep or vac or a mop they come up a treat. If I built again I would use these again. We also put them through our rental property.
If you want me to post some photos just yell out.

From an environmental perspective wood is a renewable resourse (especially plantation wood)whereas laminate isn't.
I would also be researching what kind of fumes laminate might emit.

I would go wood every time. Wood does dent and scratch but when it is maintained well that adds to its appeal as it ages. There is actually a technique that is used to dent and scratch wood so that it appears older because there is a huge market for distressed and recycled timber.

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).