Thinking About Floating Floorboards?

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It’s been hot in debate in the home improvement world for many years now - are floating floorboards the future of minimalist living or are they a pale imitation of the timber floors of yesteryear? Floating floorboards may be a great choice for your home. Here are the pros and cons for investing in them and a few examples of how they can really work in a space.

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The benefits

The term “floating floorboards” refers to the method of installation and not the product itself. It sidesteps the need for glueing or nailing and instead fits boards onto a surface using the weight and tension of the pieces. The main benefit to this is ,of course, the huge amount of time and effort it saves in the installation process, ultimately also saving you money - often it can even be a DIY job without need for specialised tools or skills. Because they can be manufactured to imitate a wide variety of timbers, floating floorboards give you freedom of design choice. Within this, laminate flooring is especially cheap to install and doesn’t require any maintenance, whereas higher quality floorboards will feature a very thin layer of true timber attached to high density fibreboard. Unlike true timber flooring, which is rigidly attached to the underlying surface, floating floorboards can expand or contract appropriately in different climates and are therefore well-suited to areas of high-humidity.

The drawbacks

Floating floorboards cannot be sanded - which means they must be replaced if the original sealed finish gets too worn or damaged. They are obviously thinner, less sturdy and less authentic than their true timber counterparts and therefore more prone to warping. Some people complain that walking barefoot on floating floorboards allows you to feel the flexibility of the material. Perhaps most importantly, floating floorboards do not increase the value of a property in the way true hardwood flooring does - it is therefore an investment which some might consider forgoing for a few years in order to actually get more bang for their buck with proper timber flooring.