While hardwood floors are attractive and always in high demand, not everyone can afford the high costs associated with them. Engineered flooring is meant to give the same look as real hardwood floors, without the high costs.

The prices of hardwood flooring is consistently high and can very easily go over the budget that most people looking to redecorate their home have set. On top of the initial costs, they must be installed by professionals; this adds up to another cost that can dig deep into the pockets of the homeowners. The goal of engineered flooring is to give an option that will not cost so much initially, and will not have to be professionally installed at an additional cost.

This type of flooring usually entails a mix of real wood along with plywood, which along reduces costs. The final product is finished to look like the real thing, and with multiple application methods there is virtually to telling the difference once it has been installed.

Most of the engineered flooring that can be found is purchased in interlocking sets, which are simply placed on the floor and put together piece by piece like a sort of simplistic puzzle. This style is the easiest to install, and the easiest to pull up. The downside to this is that these are the easiest to incur damage, and if somehow a piece gets unsettled it is obvious that it is in fact not real hardwood.

Nailing or gluing the panels down is the next option. Both are more time-consuming than interlocking styles, but they are more likely to stay firmly in place. It’s imperative to ensure that each panel is at the same height and not crooked to continue to get the real hardwood look. Anyone who has had experience putting down laminate tiling will be well-aware of the gluing method, while nailing them down is fairly self-explanatory.

These floor panels can be found at most hardware and home improvement stores, and some larger department stores often carry them as well. It is possible to find them in styles that imitate almost any kind of wood, giving plenty of options to the homeowner looking to get a pure hardwood look. Like laminate, it is sold in sets, though they are rectangular in shape as opposed to square.

This type of flooring is a great alternative for any homeowner looking to get nice looking floors without the high prices associated with real hardwood flooring. With proper installation, engineered flooring looks very much like the real thing and in many cases is completely indistinguishable. While they certainly are not the real thing, they are the closest thing to be had for reasonable costs and installation time.

Brands

Anderson™ • Alloc™ •  Appalachian™ • Armstrong™ • BEL AIR™ • BR-111™ • Bruce™ • Columbia™ • Country Wide Flooring™ • Dynamic™ • Elegance™ • Evergreen™ • Harris-Tarkett™ • Hartco™ • Horizon™ • Johnson™ • Junkers™ • Kahrs™ • Kelleher™ • L.J. Smith™ • Mannington™ • Max Winsdor™ • Mirage™ • Mohawk™ • Nature Select™ • Pergo™ • Quick-Step™ • Shaw™ • Studio-B™ • Uniclic™ • United Wood Flooring™ • Vintage™ • Virginia™ • Witex™™

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