It’s hard to imagine modern design and renovation without using this relatively young but well-established floor-covering product. Its use is no longer limited to covering floors, but thanks to the convenient click-lock system, it is also used to decorate walls and ceilings.

Modern innovative technologies allow creating a principally new, more durable, completely environmentally safe product which is in no way inferior to real hardwood floor covering in terms of its esthetic properties. And thanks to its technical characteristics, it is in many ways superior to it.

The history of modern laminate flooring dates back to the 70-s of the XX, when a Swedish engineer developed a plank consisting of a phenol resin board pressed using thermosetting glue under high pressure and temperature and a decorative layer. This plank was very different from the modern floor covering

Today laminate floor planks are multi-layer HDF, MDF, or pressed wood boards covered by several layers of paper pressed together using resins under high temperature and pressure. The top layer is a protective wear-resistant cover. Laminate is often called laminated parquet because it initially imitated real parquet and because the word “laminated” means “multi-layer”. The strength of the coreboard and the thickness of the protective layer determine the wear-resistance and usage area of the laminate.

Laminate planks come in different forms and dimensions, but they always consist of several layers:
✔ The lowest laminate layer protects the material from deformation and increases its rigidity. Some types of laminate come with an additional backing which improves sound insulation.
✔ The coreboard is produced of HDF, MDF or pressed wood. Most properties of the material are determined exactly by this layer. Furthermore, the coreboard bears the lock used to connect planks with each other.
✔ The decorative layer defines the look of laminate. It consists of paper with a pattern or image imitating some natural material.
✔ The top protective layer is made of a transparent mixture of melamine resins. This layer hardens during manufacturing and becomes a highly wear-resistant and durable polymer cover. In some modern collections, the top layer has uneven texture to imitate the surface of natural materials. A special feature which makes the laminate look even more realistic is making color more intense on the sides of planks, thus creating a 3-D look of the pattern.