Laminate Flooring Cost
What laminate costs to buy and to fit, what the AC rating changes, and when it is the right economy — and when it is a false one.
Laminate is the cheapest way to floor a whole house without it looking cheap, and the category where the gap between a good decision and a bad one is widest.
The false economy
Two questions to ask before ordering
What the AC rating is for each room rather than for the house, and whether the underlay is included or attached. Both change the figure, and neither is visible in a photograph of the floor.
The bathroom exception is the one worth following up, and what luxury vinyl costs to buy and to lay sets out where each stops being the correct specification. For the dry rooms above, current laminate prices show what a fixed budget actually covers, and where the money goes in a flooring quote explains why the board is only part of the figure.
Common questions
Which AC rating do I need?
Match it to the room rather than to the house. A hallway, a kitchen and a room with a dog take abrasion that a spare bedroom never sees, and buying one rating throughout means overpaying in the quiet rooms and underspecifying in the busy ones. It costs nothing to decide room by room.
Can laminate go in a bathroom?
Choose LVT or porcelain instead. Many current laminate ranges are sealed well enough that a wiped-up spill does no harm, but a bathroom is where water stands rather than passes, and standing water finds a joint and swells the core beneath the decor. In a bathroom, laminate is a replacement waiting for a date.
Is underlay really necessary?
It is the line most often deleted from a quote and the one that does the most work. On a ground floor it carries the damp-proof membrane, it corrects minor variation in the subfloor, and it removes the hollow sound that identifies a cheap laminate floor the moment you walk on it.
What a fixed budget covers depends partly on delivery and access. See the towns and regions we deliver to.
