Buying Guide: Shop for Water Resistant Laminate Flooring
Laminate flooring can offer water-resistant protection and the natural beauty of real-wood or stone looks. Find floors to complement your style at LL Flooring.
Water-resistant laminate offers the homeowner a versatile, high-performance flooring that features both timeless looks and strong protection from water damage and moisture. You can choose from a wide variety of realistic wood and stone looks in warm, rich colors and alluring textures. It's an authentic, wood-based flooring that provides a similar appearance, sound, and feel to solid hardwood and stone, while offering advanced construction and performance.
In addition to its beautiful look and impressive wear-resistance, laminate lets you breathe easier in other ways, too. Dust and particles are easily swept or wet-mopped away. And it's GreenGuard and FloorScore certified, so it meets rigorous chemical emissions standards for improved indoor air quality.
Water-resistant laminate provides a cost-effective solution for homeowners with busy households looking for hard-surface flooring with improved protection, and it can be an ideal choice for investors looking to improve rentals or properties they look to sell with flooring that doesn't require excessive maintenance or repair.
Laminate Flooring Brings Natural Beauty to Your Home
Laminate is a true wood-based flooring made of layers of wood, laminate, and wear protection. The décor layer gives you a choice of beautiful natural looks, whether it's a warm cream and honey offered by wood or a cool gray and white that stone provides.
Wood looks for warm homes
For a wood-look laminate flooring, choose from both domestic and exotic wood looks, including oak, hickory, Brazilian acacia, and more. You'll find woods offering luscious shades of cream and honey along with deep mochas and chocolates. For a cool, airier feel, find ashes and whitewashed grays that brighten your home with a lighter touch.
Stone styles for a breezier feel
You can also select from a range of stone looks offering their own distinctive appeal. Alluring swirls of marble, deep granite-style ridging, and terrace stone-tiling looks all come in shades of gray, with accents of blue, white, and cream.
Plank sizes make a big difference
Along with the décor of your planking, its sizing can have a big effect on your home's feel. Short, narrow planks can give your home a more traditional, almost formal appeal. Wider, longer planks can open up your room and give it a more informal, open feel. And laminate floors at LL Flooring include the AquaSeal Xtend range, a trend-forward option offering wide planks reaching lengths of 6 or 8 feet.
Improved Water Resistance and Protection Against Wear and Tear
AquaSeal's laminate planking has state-of-the-art construction techniques that produce a water-resistant floor with improved protection against wear and tear. It features a unique, innovative locking technology that stops water from seeping between your planks and infiltrating the layers beneath. That protection will last for up to 24 to 72 hours, providing sufficient time for a Sunday afternoon clean-up of a weekend party.
Along with superior water protection, these planks offer additional strength and safeguarding. A clear protective layer of ultraviolet (UV)-cured lacquer infused with aluminium oxide provides the first layer of protection. It resists scratches and abrasions and fights any fading from direct sunlight so your floors can always look their best.
Beneath the wear layer are the décor layer and the medium-density fiberboard (MDF) core, which give your boards the wood or stone look and the realistic coloring and graining, along with additional firmness and stability. A locking layer and a balance layer allow for easy installation and better dimensional stability.
These layers are pressed together to create a 21st-century flooring solution that combines beauty with performance—rich colors with excellent water-resistant and wear-resistant protection.
Texture and Feel Gives Laminate Flooring Even More Possibilities
To complement the wood and stone looks, choose from a range of textures for even more visual interest and appeal.
Silky smooth for a clean feel
A smooth texture makes for a lovely choice, giving you a clean, uniform look that looks great with a flat, satin, or gloss finish.
Subtle details make all the difference
Faint saw marks and light wire brushing during manufacturing give your floors a subtle texturing that adds just the right touch.
Distress signals we love
Distressed textures create a weathering effect, with heavy wire-brushed, hand-scraped, or saw-cut lines enhancing your home's appeal with an ageless rustic charm.
Graining a head start on beauty
LL Flooring offers a technique called embossed in register texturing, in which a combination of textured looks is matched with your floor's décor image to give your floor enhanced authenticity and added attraction.
Things to Consider Before Installing Laminate On Your Own
AquaSeal water-resistant laminate floors can be installed on any grade of your home and use a tight locking mechanism and edge coating that also takes some of the guesswork out of installation. But before you go installing your new laminate planks, take note of the following details.
Acclimation is key
Laminate planks are a natural, wood-based product and can expand or contract as the wood responds to changes in its environment. It's essential that, before you install laminate flooring, you allow your planks to first acclimate to your home's environment for at least 48 hours. This will let the planks respond to increases or decreases in temperature, humidity, and other factors that can affect the planks physically and avoid cupping, buckling, or other detrimental effects.
Subfloor prep
Be sure to install your flooring over a flat, dry, and clean subfloor of either concrete or wood. If your subfloor isn't flat, flooring joints can separate, break, or split. Between your subfloor and your planking, place a moisture barrier or underlayment to mitigate the risks of subfloor moisture.
Installation Considerations and Maintenance
Of course, there's more to installing laminate planking than simply locking planks into place. Make sure you have what you need before you lay your first plank. And feel free to let someone else do the heavy lifting—we recommend hiring a professional independent contractor for installation.
Tools to do the job
Edge glue and other specially-formulated adhesives, silicone backer rods, and flooring cutters all offer ways to make your job easier so you can complete it faster. And you'll find them all at LL Flooring.
Molding and baseboards complete the look
Molding and baseboards add a decorative accent as they help to cover the seams where your floors and walls meet. Choose from a wide variety of appealing baseboards and molding that match your floors, add attractive detailing, and hide imperfections.
Maintaining your laminate planking is a breeze
Because AquaSeal laminate offers both water and wear resistance, it can handle periodic cleaning to keep your floors shining like new. Use a soft-brush broom to sweep dirt and debris away as needed, then you can apply both a wet mop and jet mop when a deeper clean is needed.
A Cost-Effective Choice
Laminate offers luxurious looks, enhanced performance, and impressive wear-resistance. In fact, laminate provides a high-value flooring solution that's perfect for anyone who wants a rich natural look that won't require a massive investment.
Water-Resistant Laminate Flooring Brings All-Around Appeal
Rich natural colors, striking textures and graining, excellent water-resistant and wear-resistant protection, easy installation and maintenance—AquaSeal water-resistant laminate flooring has all this and more. Thanks to a wide range of colors, styles, and looks to choose from, you have the opportunity to enhance your home's appeal. Explore your choices and see how water-resistant laminate can give your interiors improved protection from spills and splashes along with beauty and charm.
