Interior Design and Laminate Flooring: A Guest Post from Rob Jones of BuildDirect

Today’s guest post is from Rob Jones, online marketer and chief blogger at BuildDirect, an online laminate flooring and other building materials company.  In this post, Rob outlines how laminate flooring is no longer looked upon as a short term flooring solution as it once was, and outlines five varieties of laminate flooring that add visual spark to all kinds of interiors.

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The functional advantages of laminate continue to endure.  For instance,

• They’re relatively easy and fast to install, so with some experience with basic carpentry, you can install them yourself.
• You can float them, which means they don’t need to be fastened to a subfloor like a solid hardwood floor does.
• They are specifically designed to guard against abrasion, moisture, and the effects of subtle temperature changes that cause expansion and contraction, common to all wood floors or (in this case) wood floor derivatives.

Despite these practical advantages, laminate floors haven’t historically shared in the glory when it comes to a stylish floor. But, laminate flooring has come a long way in terms of stylish surfaces in a relatively short period of time.  Not only is it made to be durable for decades at a time, it also looks great – really great – in nearly every area of a residence or commercial space.  Where at one time laminate floors were perhaps something of a budgetary stopgap, the presence of a laminate floor is more and more common in spaces that just ooze pure style.

And here are some of the developments in recent years that make laminate a great choice to spruce up your interiors:

1. Embossed and Textured Laminate flooring

Subtlety and attention to detail are some of the finer points of good design.  Embossed and textured laminate is another step beyond earlier versions of laminate flooring, which were generally thinner, and with smooth, flat surfaces.  The texturing allows for a more wood-like surface that can be appreciated on a visual, as well as tactile level.

2. “Handscraped” laminate flooring

The name ‘handscraped’ doesn’t exactly apply since you can’t really scrape a laminate floor surface as you can a real wood floor.  Yet, that same distressed effect has been reproduced in the factory by means of an extrusion process to give you the elegant contouring of the boards you’ll find in a solid or engineered floor.

3. “Piano Finish” laminate flooring

To get that pristine, high sheen, reflective wood floor look, a piano finish laminate floor is the answer.

4. “Narrow-plank” laminate flooring

Replicating the look of old-world hardwood, narrow board laminate flooring is a variety that is keenly observed in rendering the look of authentic solid hardwood.

5. Beveled-edge laminate flooring

Another subtle, yet important, detail is the beveled edge style. A bevel edge is a style which demarcates the grooves between boards by means of an angled cut.  This gives visual dimension to the boards, making telling them apart from the real thing a tough job if you’re not a solid hardwood pro.

While there are a few things to know before you buy a laminate floor, this choice in an interior surface has evolved into a stylish alternative.  These five examples of visual effects in laminate flooring (and not mutually exclusive) are just a few stylistic options to consider when you’re shopping for flooring surfaces to transform your spaces.

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You can read more of Rob’s blog posts about wood flooring in the BuildDirect blog.  And be sure to follow Rob and BuildDirect on Twitter.