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Laminate Flooring vs Carpet: Pros and Cons 

How to find the best floor covering for your home

When you’re searching for the perfect floor covering for your home, the most popular choices are laminate or carpet. 

Both have advantages and disadvantages so it comes down to how you live and entertain, the climate you live in, your budget and how much time you have to maintain and clean your floor. 

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of laminate flooring vs carpet to help you decide which flooring is the right choice for you. 

Carpet

Pros

Being made from wool, wool blends, or synthetic fibres, carpet is obviously warmer than hard floor coverings. In colder areas, this makes it ideal for retaining heat, plus it offers a saving on energy costs. 

Carpets are soft and luxurious underfoot and come in a variety of colours, patterns and weaves to suit both high traffic and less often used areas. Carpet lasts a long time and remains warm and functional for many years.

Cons

The most obvious factor here is that once you spill a glass of red wine on your carpet, it will never quite be the same! Carpet stains easily, and even darker shades and flecked patterns can quickly show signs of wear and tear if you don’t treat them carefully. If you have small children or pets, your carpet is likely to accumulate stains over time and although it still serves its purpose of being a warm floor covering, it can look tired and dirty easily.

Carpet also has to be installed by professionals – a DIY carpet job isn’t a good idea due to the difficulty in getting it to fit just right. This can mean an extra expense when you factor in installation costs. 

Another drawback of carpet is the cost: good quality carpets are substantially more expensive than something like oak laminate flooring. That means that because it’s such a large expense, it’s easy to fall into the trap of worrying about your family or visitors spiling things on it – and wouldn’t you rather just relax and enjoy time with family and friends?

Laminate Flooring

Pros

Today’s laminates come in a huge range of nature-identical patterns, from pale Scandinavian hues to rich brown and black timber finishes. Oak laminate flooring such as the vitality laminate flooring range is a popular choice, offering excellent value for money and a beautiful, refined finish. 

Whilst not as warm as carpet, laminate is surprisingly comfortable to walk on in bare feet, due to the high-quality underlays available on the market. The right underlay not only insulates and improves the feel of the floor, but it also muffles sound for better acoustic performance. 

One of the main benefits of laminate flooring is of course that it is incredibly easy to maintain. This is why it is often used in high traffic areas such as commercial spaces – it remains looking great even under heavy-duty use. 

And, because it maintains this ‘like-new’ appearance for a very long time, it can improve the resale value of your home without the hassle of having to replace a tired, worn-out floor. Spending thousands on replacing carpets when you’re looking to sell is dead money, especially when you can simply install an attractive and durable floor in the first place.

Cons

Laminate is the perfect candidate for a DIY approach, however, not everyone is keen on doing their own installation. The planks join together in a straightforward method, but you will need to factor in an install cost if you’re not willing to do this part of the process yourself. 

Laminate also presents a harder surface than carpet – and whilst it’s not as hard and unforgiving as slate or tile, it can mean a dropped plate is more likely to break when compared to carpet. 

Finally, many people simply prefer the traditional cosy atmosphere of carpet particularly in areas such as bedrooms. Laminate does offer a different feel to your space, meaning sometimes a compromise is the right way to go: you can install carpet in bedrooms and laminate elsewhere throughout your home to get a good balance. 

Browse our timber laminate range

There are so many styles to choose from like our popular Vitality laminate flooring range featuring 12 different oak tones, or the Balterio Quattro vintage range that mimics rustic effects like saw marks and pinholes. 

Additionally, Woodland Lifestyle’s Grande Wide laminate flooring is the only laminate in the country that is digitally printed, giving it incredible timber realism. 

Get in touch with our team for a free sample or to find out more about our laminate floor coverings on (09) 308 7948 or email us at [email protected].
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