Laminate Flooring in Cambridge

The pale, brushed look that Cambridge bedrooms tend towards is available in laminate at a fraction of what the engineered board costs, and a bedroom is where the product is at its best: a dry room, light traffic, a board in a light oak print that matches the engineered floor downstairs closely enough for the stairs to join them. In an Arbury or King’s Hedges house the boards float over a slab on a moisture-barrier underlay; in a Chesterton graduate let they are the floor that survives the furniture and is replaced without regret.

A Mill Road terrace sets two traps for a floating floor: Victorian boards that sag between the joists, which are levelled first, and the step down to the rear extension, which is laid as a floor of its own with its own expansion gap and a trim at the edge. Beyond the step the kitchen is wet too often for a board whose abrasion standard assumes a dry room, and the BML rigid vinyl takes over. At Darwin Green the screed is heated, and the boards are listed as compatible with the heating.

Flats are 35% of the homes in Cambridge, and laminate in a flat is a question of sound before anything else: a hard click floor over a bare slab carries footfall into the flat below. Approved Document E sets the impact-sound limits and the lease usually adds a clause, and the answer is the underlay, chosen on a tested impact-sound figure under EN 16354 rather than a claim on the pack. Check the lease first.

Terraced houses are 28% of the homes in the Cambridge district, and laminate is the floor most often laid through them: a click floor floats over the old suspended boards on an underlay, and the whole ground floor of a terrace can be done in a weekend. The condition is the base. Loose or springy boards are screwed down first, and the underlay chosen for a timber floor is one without a vapour barrier, so the void beneath can breathe.