I am putting down new flooring in my living room. I am going for the look of hardwood but I can’t afford actual hardwood, so I am trying to decide between laminate or veneer. The price difference is about $500.
I have an Irish Setter mix and share custody of my messy 12 year old but otherwise the living room doesn’t get that much wear and tear. The room is not really bright and doesn’t get moisture more than usual for a living room.
The advantage of laminate seems to be it never fades and is more resistant to scars.
The advantage of veneer seems to be that it can be sanded if it ever scars and it is better for sound. (A co-worker who’s a Doper says that his TV sound used to vibrate noticably off the laminate but he fixed it with a rug.)
Does anybody have any suggestions for one or the other? How big a difference is the sound of walking?
Laminate will be quiter. Won’t look as nice as wood.
As for durability, the veneer, if pre-finished at the factory, could have an incredibly durable polyurethane or epoxy-type finish. Sanding is possible, but I wouldn’t say guaranteed. It depends on how it wears and the thickness of the veneer.
Veneer wouldn’t exactly be noisy, and if it is a floating floor with a thin pad underneath, it could rival laminate for noise suppression.
I installed an Armstrong laminate floor last year in my family room and have been entirely pleased with it.
The foam underlayment is essential to cutting back or even eliminating that hollow clopping noise that seems to plague laminate floors. Any acoustic problems (echo or “brightness” in sound) will be as likely to happen with wood or laminate - the culprit is a smooth flat surface, moreso that what the floor surface is made of.
For durability, laminate wins. My floor shrugs off abuse from my dog’s claws, and a dropped cast iron pan made a heck of a noise but didn’t damage the floor. Laminate flooring puts an incredibly hard and dense finish layer on an incredibly hard and dense core. A wood floor would have suffered a severe dent from that pan, plus a lot of scratches from the dog.
For repairability, it’s no contest. Repairing laminate is all but impossible, but wood can be sanded and re-finished. A wood veneer floor can probably be carefully sanded once. Solid wood can be sanded probably three times. If you do chip laminate, there are chip and crack fillers available. They work well, but won’t be a perfect match to the floor’s color and grain.