Board flooring is still the first choice to cover our home acres. With the comforting honesty of a wood grain, ridiculously easy maintenance that a rug just can’t compete with, and a price tag that works for everyone, most of us are faced with a walk to the hardwood floor at some point during our construction or renovation. Here we take a look at the subdivisions of hardwood floors you will face including laying, longevity and cost that should influence your final selection.
- 50-220 € per m² from installation for hardwood, often on offer
Solid wood floors are often seen as the most elegant choice for floorboards – but that’s far too simplistic. When you talk about a solid wood floor, you should compare it very carefully with the advantages of a parquet floor. As the name suggests, a solid wood floor is quite simply a board made from a single piece of honest, seasoned wood cut from a single type of plank.
Laminates like this Pergo Oak Living Expressions floor are ideal for laying plank styles in the kitchen. Look for water resistance for kitchens and waterproof styles for bathrooms. The reviews will be on the specifications. Try Bathshack for deals starting at € 136 on this premium laminate, bathshack.com.
Some boards in single, double or triple or parquet design – come raw, others are finished, while others are treated (oiled, waxed, etc.) on site.
In terms of price, the offers for high-quality solid wood floors can be astounding, for example Juncker’s Black Oak Boulevard floorboards in a trendy ultra-matt lacquer were recently offered by an Irish supplier for less than € 110 per square meter, a saving of almost € 95 on their MSRP . Also check out deals on fabulous HexParket, junckers.ie. floorstoredirect.ie offers narrow 1-strip Atlantic Canadian Maple from € 72.94, and that is completely varnished.
Solid wood floors have a reputation for timeless elegance, robustness and great effort. While all of these things are true, its two distinctive advantages are its density, which dampens the sound vibration as it transitions, and the ability to be repainted (sanded / stained / varnished / varnished) over and over again.
Parquet has a wide price range. Make sure you have good veneer depths for a high-quality floor that can be sanded in the future. The top is just as beautiful with branches and figures as a solid wood floor. Prices from 40 € per m², Elka, in stock at hollands.ie (Cork).
They’re also good at repelling spills and overall can be expected to last for decades, re-imagined as other materials are torn out, salvaged, and recycled for new projects. FSC-based wood is environmentally friendly. The range of finishes for the individual, authentic grain of each board has been expanded to include charred, split textures and hand-sanded waves and distressed chain battering for the boards.
Apart from the fact that these are the most expensive planks on offer (bar softwoods such as about € 12 per 4.8 million layer and better structural stability. The installation is best left to a professional, as your planks or pieces of parquet will acclimatise carefully, cut , nailed and glued. Solid wood floorboards are not suitable for kitchens and bathrooms, as water can penetrate there and even deform a thick floor. UFH can also shrink and crease this flooring. Get your assembly price in the total price, including all finishing work and accessories such as decorative parts, underlay, insulation or moisture proofing
- € 30 per m² for 0.6 mm veneer click, no sanding possible, up to over € 120 per m² for Premiere 6 mm veneer lines ex. installation
A fantastic product that delivers the authentic aesthetic beauty of real wood and addresses the most important issues with a continuous wood panel. The top of the board consists of 3 mm to 15 mm thick wood veneer, which lies over a core sandwich of 5-7 layers that run at a 90-degree angle to each other in order to keep the board level and immobile in the event of fluctuating moisture in the materials.
Brushed, oiled, bleached or lacquered, the price of the very best wood-based materials is comparable to solid, middle-class hardwood. For a fresh cut look with attractive rusticity; go for brushed boards. Look out for the commercial AC5 rating for diamond touch performance, which is also available from some cheaper brands. Budget for indispensable finishing profiles and matching skirting boards if you feel like it.
Better finished floors can be sanded and refinished, but not as often as hardwood. Even freshened up twice, you can see that with care it could last for half a century.
The economical Quick-Step floor with its easy Unicclic installation is perfect for a DIY project. Follow an online tutorial and don’t save on quality documents from € 8 per m². Pictured here is Quick-Step Largo, Long Island Light. Prices from € 24.99, quick-step.ie (the company also offers Unic-Clic parquet flooring)
Expect to lose 0.5mm of the surface layer when sanding. They can be laid with underlay to float over a range of subfloors, including concrete, and vault them back over the preparation required for massive planking. With T&G edging and gluing, most are in the skills of a confident DIY weekend warrior. With the ability to bend and move without warping, they are better suited for UFH and come in a variety of pre-made colors and textures indistinguishable from solid wood, except for a slightly more hollow sound under harsh Paragraphs.
The prices for a good pre-fab parquet floor can be higher than expected, reaching € 120 per meter for birch plywood, and you get what you pay for with lush, wide planks (260 mm) and even 6 mm veneers. Like solid wood, engineered wood contains a lot of environmentally reactive wood in its composition and is a poor choice for high humidity such as kitchens and bathrooms.
All it takes is a small gap between the planks or a notch to finish to let water in – damage potential areas of your floor. In the event of a disaster, keep 10% more boards than surplus as certain products may not be available year after year. Make sure you know if the floor is sub-floor attached, or “floats” – attached to itself as a raft. Wide slabs must be laid on a perfect sub-floor so that the joints stay flush and together.
- From € 25 to € 54 for more expensive brands like Pergo, per m², ex. Installation in quality floors with good pressure and a 20 year guarantee
The great and indeed often surprising contender of the wood flooring family, laminate flooring, has little or no real wood in its visible face. Durable, sturdy – think of it as a resin-textured top layer glued onto a pressed composite wood (dust and fibers) that is around 6mm to 12mm thick.
It can be glossy or textured, but as tempting as it is, it only imitates wood with varying degrees of success through digital printing and embossing technology. Laminate is very economical.
Then measure out your space to get the area in square feet, multiply the length by the width, and allow for a small fraction of the waste. When compared to the square meters of other competitors, laminate undoubtedly wins. Look for extras like Quick-Step Scratch Guard to help protect your investment.
The quality of affordable laminate floors with a wood look has improved beyond recognition over the past 30 years thanks to a multitude of modeling and beautiful polishes. It withstands heavy snares and arrows in hallways, kitchens, bathrooms, home offices, and even training rooms.
If you are building on wood in the kitchen, choose waterproof laminate and for the bathroom choose a waterproof laminate, warmer than tiles and a breeze that can be installed in a few hours. Hand-scraped varieties are ideal for concealing both dirt and minor damage, while glossy varieties can mimic petrified wood, marble, and ceramics with metropolitan ease.
Floating laminate flooring requires a small expansion space around the perimeter of the room, but with a click and clip installation – it’s great for home improvement projects on a tight budget to cut labor costs.
A thin floating floor may have fewer guarantees and may not have the UV-resistant character of real wood floors. It only convinces at first glance and can give way under the foot, making its thin construction visible almost immediately.
Real wood and engineered wood cover layers react elastically to impacts, so that they do not rub off at all or develop a gentle stress that simply gives them character.
Plastic coatings in laminate floors will repel, chafe, fade, splinter and crack over time, an ugly look that cannot be sanded, painted or otherwise rejuvenated. Wax or repair putty is your only possible solution. Concentrate on foam, styrofoam or wood fiber underlays (from € 8 per m²) to support your new flooring. Feel makes all the difference to its success and acoustic performance, especially when it is used upstairs, where it can otherwise knock on the sub-floor when walking through it.
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