For those on a tight budget, this does not mean the quality of your wooden floors will suffer because of it. Our tips below will explain the best ways to get the perfect flooring for your home cost efficiently.
What type of Wooden Floors
Choosing the type of material for your floor is the first decision to make which will impact on what you pay. Wooden flooring prices range considerably depending on the quality and style you desire. If you have set your heart on solid wooden flooring throughout, you will probably find that this can be quite expensive, but have you considered looking at engineered wooden flooring? Engineered flooring, have the look and feel of real wood due to their real wood top layer, but they are constructed using several layers of plywood. This type of flooring is considerably cheaper than real wood but has the same wow factor.
Laminate flooring tends to be the cheapest option and new technology and designs mean that they have the look, colour and texture of solid wood flooring whilst being extremely affordable. Laminate flooring is not actually wood at all. It is made up of fibreboard with a laminated photographic image of real wood. Laminate will not necessarily add value to your home like real wooden flooring will but it will give you the look you’re after an an affordable price.
Choose Cheaper Brands
Where we only like to supply the best brands due to their quality and guarantees we can steer you in the direction of cheaper brands that will still give you the look you are after. We would not automatically choose the cheapest flooring without guarantees of their quality as this is just a false economy as cheap floors tend to chip and mark easily and overall will not last as long as better quality floors. The old phrase ‘buy cheaper, buy twice’ rings true here.
Should you install wooden floors yourself?
Well this is definitely the cheapest option it is not always the best option. Laminate flooring is the only wooden flooring that we would recommend fitting yourself, as long as you are a keen DIY enthusiast that can overcome problems easily. There are several elements when fitting wooden flooring before you even attempt to lay one plank. If you have previously had carpet on your floor, then this could be hiding many imperfections in the floor. Like tiles, wooden flooring will show up every imperfections and in some cases it will become almost impossible to fit the planks together due to the bevels in the floor.
There have been several occasions when we have had to rescue a DIY disaster, but usually too late to save the damaged wood that have been laid incorrectly or cut wrong.
Using a professional is well worth the extra cost and should be considered as the main part of the budget especially when considering real wood flooring where a lot more expertise is required to produce the perfect finish that will last for years.
