Laminate Flooring in Nairobi: Honest About What It Is

What laminate is, plainly

A printed photographic layer under a clear wear coat, on a fibreboard core. There is no wood on the surface. It is the cheapest way to get a timber appearance and it can look genuinely good, and it is worth knowing exactly what you are buying.

The AC rating is the whole specification

AC1 to AC6, measuring resistance to abrasion. It is printed on the pack and it is the number that separates a floor lasting fifteen years from one looking tired in three.

• AC3. Domestic, moderate traffic. Bedrooms and studies.
• AC4. Domestic heavy and light commercial. Living rooms, hallways, anywhere with a door to outside.
• AC5 and above. Commercial. Offices and retail.

In Nairobi the pressure to fit AC3 in a hallway to hit a price is constant, and grit walked in from a murram approach is exactly what abrades a wear layer. Hallways and living rooms want AC4.

Where it fails

Water, and only water. A laminate core is fibreboard, and fibreboard that gets wet swells irreversibly. The swelling shows at the board edges as a permanent raised lip that no amount of drying reverses.

This makes laminate wrong for bathrooms, laundries and kitchens, whatever “water-resistant” claim is on the box. Water-resistant means the surface sheds a spill you wipe up. It does not mean the core survives a dishwasher leak overnight. For those rooms, SPC or tile.

Subfloor and expansion gap

Two things end most laminate installations early, and both are free to get right.

The subfloor has to be flat, because a floating floor bridging a hollow flexes at the joints and the clicks fail. And the perimeter needs an expansion gap, hidden under the skirting, because the floor grows and shrinks with humidity. A laminate fitted tight to the walls will lift in the middle of the room in the first wet season, and it is not a manufacturing fault.