Most homeowners in this day and age prefer hardwood floors to carpets. Carpets can stain easily, hold dirt and allergens in their fabric, and tend to require being replaced every few years because they can get to be too dirty.
Hardwood floors are a cleaner and prettier alternative to carpet, also increasing the value of the home once installed. If you’re looking to replace your flooring, search for some hardwood alternatives to carpet. There are plenty of alternatives, so search to see what works best for you.
Benefits of Hardwood Floors
Replacing the carpet in your home with hardwood or laminate flooring can bring countless improvements and benefits. It brings a pleasing aesthetic to your home, the shiny surface of the hardwood much sleeker than puffy carpeting. It will also make your home easier to clean than carpeted floors, as the hardwood and laminate flooring don’t collect dust or stain from spills as easily.
Hardwood and laminate flooring are also allergy-friendly, not collecting the pollen and dander of pets as much as carpeting. Hardwood floors can also improve the value of your home, a smart way to increase the value without putting in a large financial investment. Best of all, they are more durable than carpet, lasting many years and decades without a need for replacement.
Hardwood Floors vs. Laminate Floors
Both laminate flooring and hardwood floors are good alternatives to carpet but come with innate differences.
Hardwood floors are authentic wood, with the price driven by which type of tree species it’s harvested from and how rare it is. Hardwood floors require a good amount of care as they can get scratched or worn down from heavy use. The high quality can also improve the overall quality of the home, as it’s a desirable flooring option for many people.
Laminate flooring gives the same look as hardwood floors at a considerably lower price. This type of flooring is created by compressing wood at high temperatures into a thin layer. This thin layer is then placed on top of a cheaper composite wood to give it the hardwood flooring appearance. Laminate flooring does a good job of resisting the wear and tear of continued use, but be careful because low-quality laminate flooring can have cheap wood grain recreations that make it look artificial.
Cost Comparison
The quality of the wood and the size of your square footage can cause the price of new hardwood floors to fluctuate. Since that’s the case it’s a good idea to do some research costs for your specifications. The website Home Advisor estimates that a softer wood such as pine will range from $3 to $6 per square foot. A sturdier mid-range wood such as cherry or oak will fetch for $5 to $10 per square foot. An exotic and harder word such as Brazilian walnut, tigerwood, cypress, or mahogany is going to be the costliest option, ranging from $8 to $14 per square foot.
It’s best to remember that that is just for the materials. To install a cheaper wood like pine will be an additional $3 to $5 per square foot. A mid-range wood will cost an additional $8 to $10 per square foot of installation. The highest-end woods require the greatest skill to install, running an additional $4 to $8 per square foot.
Laminate flooring also has a range of installation prices, so make sure to research local professionals to see what their pricing is. According to Home Advisor, the lowest-end of laminate flooring goes for $3 to $5 per square foot. Laminate flooring with a thicker veneer placed over a core of five layers runs the mid-range rate of $5 to $10 per square foot. The highest-end laminate flooring is made with the thickest veneer on top of seven layers, running a range of $8 to $13 per square foot for the highest quality material possible.
Installation for all of the laminate flooring options tends to be the most consistent compared to hardwood flooring. Regardless of the quality and grade of the materials chosen, most installation costs for laminate flooring tend to run between $3 and $10 per square foot.
Search Installation Services
Now that you’ve seen the benefits of a hardwood floor or laminate flooring installation rather than carpeting, it’s a good idea to do some research to find the best installer near you. Search online to see what the ratings and prices of local installers are for your requirements.
Searching online for flooring installers is a great way to collect quotes to estimate the total cost of your new floors before you make the big decision. It is recommend to compare at least 3 or 4 options, which can be done easily when you do your search online. Best of all, most hardwood flooring installation companies tend to do laminate flooring as well, so you can compare both materials from each company.
