Engineered wood flooring cuts Some homeowners think that engineered flooring is not as good as solid 3/4″ thick flooring because they are under the impression that it’s cheaply made. Well, as with all consumer products, manufacturers do make products at all levels of quality, each to fit a certain price point within the market. There are engineered floors on the cheaper end of the spectrum that are specifically manufactured to be affordable to a certain portion of the market. Sometimes, consumers are fooled into believing that these cheaper products are a bargain, but we would like to refute this belief.

How To Purchase High Quality Engineered Flooring

There are a multitude of engineered floors on the market today that are made using the best raw materials available, for the prospective buyer who wants a top quality product for his or her home. You have probably heard of the popular adage “you get what you pay for.” This truism is most applicable towards the less costly engineered flooring that you will undoubtedly find at liquidators, home centers and discounter warehouses.

At the other end of the price point spectrum, you will find very high end engineered floors that have an incredibly thick real wood wear layer that can, later on if ever needed, be sanded and refinished. The problem we have in the flooring industry is that the two different types of quality engineered flooring are often intermingled by retailers and the differences between them are either not known or is not often fully explained to the consumer.

As a direct result of these missteps, in lots of cases the customer will purchase the cheaper floor that they see as a great bargain, only to have it fail once it’s installed in the home. At that point, an opinion is created and the consumer starts to think that all engineered flooring is of lesser quality than solid flooring. Even if your budget is tight, it is still possible to find a good quality engineered floor, if you know what to look for.

The goal of this article is to help the consumer understand the differences between a low quality engineered floor and a high quality engineered floor and, ultimately, what to look for in the specifications of an engineered floor when shopping around.