When it comes to flooring, you have a lot of choices. From carpets to hardwood, laminates to vinyl tiles, it’s easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of styles, materials and finishes. But for people who love the look and feel of real wood floors, but don’t want the hefty price tag or the maintenance. there is only one thing we recommend. Karndean. Now, you might be wondering Why we recommend this, and not some of the other, well-known laminate options. So today we wanted to go into the differences between the two, and explain why Karndean is the better choice for most people.
What Is Karndean?
Karndean is one of the leading manufacturers of vinyl flooring. They’re known for their high- quality, luxury feel without that sky high price.
The product itself is a vinyl flooring product, made mainly from calcium carbonate (which is just limestone), polyvinyl chloride and pigments. But one of the most unique things about Karndean is the structure. Each floor panel is made up of 5 layers:
- 2 PVC backing layers
- 1 high-definition photographic layer
- 1 clear PVC embossed wear layer
- 1 polyurethane protective top coating layer
This unique composition is what makes Karndean flooring so tough, slip-resistant, and long lasting. The photographic layer also offers a wider variety of colour and style choices than most other types of flooring.
How Is It Different from Laminate?
This is one of the most common questions were asked when we recommend Karndean as an alternative to laminate. The first and biggest difference is that Karndean is a type of vinyl, while laminate is made from resin and fibre boards. Laminate often aims to look like wood, but the way it’s made makes that very difficult to achieve. You can always tell it’s not the real thing. But Karndean can imitate real wood in a lot of different styles and colours thanks to that photographic layer, so if you don’t want to spring for real hardwood floors, this is your best option.
Laminate also has a big problem with curling and shrinking. In some ways that makes it more like real wood, which suffers from the same issues, but it means you’ll be frustrated by the edges of your floor coming up! Laminates particularly prone to this in wet rooms, bathrooms and kitchens, where the moisture can peel back the top layer and cause damage and shrinkage beneath. Karndeans’ unique structure means that each board maintains its form for its entire lifespan, with no curling or shrinking out of position. Its waterproof top layer means that it went de laminate on contact with water – so it’s perfect for bathrooms, hallways and utility rooms. In short, Karndean is more robust, better made and more attractive than most laminate options.
Why Is Karndean More Popular?
In case you haven’t noticed, Warson Flooring are big fans of Karndean! we love it because of its superior quality and just how hard wearing it is. It’s also one of the quicker styles of flooring to install, which means our customers get their brand new floor in place much faster. It’s a win on all levels!
From a fitting point of view, Karndean also offers a range of design strips that can be added in-between the main planks, along with decorative, tramline and key line boarder options so that you can truly customise your floor down to the last detail. No two Karndean installs are the same, which means we can offer a truly bespoke flooring solution for our customers. Not to mention that Karndean comes with a lifetime guarantee, so if anything does happen to go wrong with it, you can get it fixed or replaced right away.
At Warson Flooring we supply and install a huge range of luxury vinyl flooring, including Karndean. We have options to give you the natural look of wood and stone flooring with the added day to day advantages of luxury vinyl tiles. Stunning wood and stone effects are beautifully recreated with these tiles, which can be laid in a straightforward traditional way, or in any funky pattern you like! with every colour and style you can imagine available, luxury vinyl- tiles like Karndean are the perfect way to design your flooring in exactly the style you want. To find out more, just get in touch with the team today.