If you stand at standing height and look at a good 8mm laminate floor next to a good 14mm engineered oak floor, you would struggle to tell them apart. The difference shows up in three places: how the floor feels under bare feet, how it sounds when you walk on it, and how it ages over the next ten to twenty years.
This is the comparison we walk customers through, because the right answer genuinely depends on the room.
What each one is, briefly
Laminate is a high-density fibreboard core with a photographic image of wood (or stone) bonded under a transparent melamine wear layer. The image is excellent on modern laminates — high definition, deeply embossed, sometimes registered to the texture so the grain you see matches the grain you feel. There is no real wood involved.
Engineered wood is a real wood wear layer — typically 2mm to 6mm of oak, walnut or ash — bonded onto a multi-ply plywood or HDF backer. It is real timber on the surface. It sands and refinishes; laminate does not.
Cost
Laminate sits at roughly half the price of engineered wood for the same plank size and look. A premium laminate (10mm to 12mm, AC5 wear rating, registered emboss) approaches the price of a budget engineered wood. The crossover point is about £35 to £40 per square metre, where you are choosing between a top-end laminate and an entry-level engineered.
Durability — surface
Laminate wins outright on surface durability. The melamine wear layer is harder than oak and resists scratches, scuffs and chair scrapes better than a real wood surface does. AC4 and AC5 ratings are designed for commercial use; in a home, they are effectively bulletproof for the next twenty years.
Engineered wood scratches more easily. A 2mm oak veneer with a UV-oil finish will pick up marks where laminate would not. The trade-off is that those marks can be sanded out — a 4mm or 6mm wear layer is a refinishable surface, two to three times over its life. Laminate cannot be refinished. When it wears, it is replaced.
Durability — water
This is where the picture changes. Real wood expands when it gets wet and contracts when it dries. Engineered is more stable than solid, but it is not waterproof. A leaked dishwasher will cup an engineered floor; the same leak on a hydrolock-rated laminate will sit on the surface for hours.
If the room is a bathroom, an en-suite, or a kitchen with a known appliance, laminate (specifically a hydrolock or aqua-rated laminate) is the safer choice. For everywhere else, both are fine.
Feel and sound
Engineered wood feels softer and warmer underfoot. The fibreboard core of laminate is denser and reads as cooler. Engineered also sounds quieter — the higher-density core of laminate is what produces the slightly hollow tap that gives cheap laminate away. A premium laminate with an integrated underlay closes most of that gap; a budget laminate without one does not.
Underfloor heating
Both work. Engineered wood is the more forgiving — the multi-ply backer is dimensionally stable across temperature changes. With laminate, follow the manufacturer’s surface temperature limit (usually 27°C); above that, the planks can bow.
Resale
An estate agent will describe a real-wood floor as a real-wood floor. Laminate gets called laminate. In a higher-value property the difference can register on price; in a flat or a starter home it usually does not.
Our short version
- Kitchens, hallways, anywhere likely to see water: high-grade laminate.
- Sitting rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms with no water risk: engineered wood, ideally 14mm with a 3mm or 4mm wear layer.
- A house where the floor will run continuously across both: a single product. It is worth picking one good range and laying it through.
Our laminate range and our engineered wood range are sized in panel quantities of 5 to 10 boxes, with samples available. Call us if you would like our recommendation for your room.
