Laminate Floor Types and Design

Laminate floor generally comes in two thickness 8mm and 12mm. 8mm mostly comes with AC3 rating and is commonly used in residential setting. Major manufacturers produce 12mm with AC4 rating to cater for heavy traffic areas. However, more premium design and special feature laminate floor tend to come in 12mm.

Laminate floor comes with various type of surface finish and edges. The most common are light or crystal emboss (smooth/light texture) and middle emboss (textured) surface finish. Special surface finish includes handscraped surface where the surface is wavelike to mimic natural timber, wood sculptured surface, matching register surface where the emboss pattern matches the wood grain printing, glossy finish where the surface is glossy and mirrorlike. These special surface usually comes in 12mm only. These premium surface finishes usually comes with a V-groove or formed edge bevel. When these planks are connected together they form a groove to make it look like a real timber plank.

The printing design of the laminate comes with a few variants namely full plank, two strip and three strip design. In a two strip or three strip design, each plank has alternate light and dark tone strip within the plankitself. The end result is to have thinner plank appearance. In a full plank design, the floor generally have a uniform tone throughout.

Caring For your Laminate Floor

•Vacuum or dust mop the floor to remove loose dirt or grit.
•Wipe up spills immediately.
•Do not allow liquids to stand on your floor.
•Spots or spills can be removed with a light spray of laminate cleaner and dry cloth.
•Weekly maintenance should include a light mist of laminate cleaner applied to the mop. Dry and moist areas.
•Do not use polished, waxes, abrasive cleaners or pretreated cleaning pads, wet mops or concentrated cleaners.
•Place walk-off mats at main traffic entrance and felt protective pads under furniture legs to prevent scratching.
•Heavier stains, such as crayons, felt-tip markers, etc. may be removed with laminate floor cleaner available at home improvement stores.
•Never use ammonia based cleaners or unapproved cleaners on your laminate floor.

Laminate Floor Abrasion Class (AC) Rating

The AC Ratings involve numerous quality-control tests that cover such things as a product's resistance to abrasion, stains, burns and even furniture marks. The AC Ratings are a numerical scale ranked from 1 to 5. AC 1 is the lowest rating, and products with this rating should only be used in light-traffic areas. Most residential laminate flooring will come with an AC 2 or 3 ranking, AC3 is recommended for residential and moderate commercial traffic usage. While AC4 and AC5 is meant for heavy traffic areas eg. shopping complexes etc.

Composition of Laminate Flooring

A) Highly anti-abrasive protective overlay
B) Melamine impregnated decorative film
C) Super Water Resistant high density hardwood fibre board (HDF)
D) Balancing film for dimensional stability
E) Interlocking system
F) Wax
G) Underlayment

Brief History of Laminate Floor

Laminate flooring was conceived in 1977 by the Swedish company Pergo. The company first marketed its product to Europe in 1984, and later to the United States in 1994. In 1994 Pergo laminate flooring was introduced into 107 stores on the East Coast and Midwest of America. By the summer of that year it had proved an overwhelming success and had gone nationwide into 850 stores. In 1995 Pergo laminate flooring was introduced into the Asia Pacific region.

In Malaysia the first laminate flooring factory was set up in 1996 by Stalheim Industries (Inovar Floor) in Batang Berjuntai, Selangor and later in 2000 another factory was set up in Mentakab, Pahang by Robina Flooring. In case you are wondering, yes there are only two local factory in Malaysia producing laminate flooring. The rest are mainly imported from China and some from Thailand.