Another nice things about laminate wood flooring is that it expands and contracts as a whole. Since it is connected to itself but not the floor beneath, swelling and shrinking is hardly noticeable. For this reason you never want to connect your floating floor with any fixed object in the room. If you do the expansion could cause buckling and rippling throughout your floor.
Obviously glueless floors will be less messy to install than a glued laminate covering, but the difference in installation time is amazing. A typical tongue and groove glued floor will take roughly 8 hours to complete a 400 square foot area. With glueless floors you can complete the same area in close to half the time.
Because they are engineered, laminate floors come in a variety of patterns and styles. Some looks more like ceramic tile than wood and other types look almost exactly like real wood. There are some offered now that actually come with a real hardwood veneer, so the top part of your laminate is actually real wood!
Most glueless laminate floors need a moisture barrier of some kind beneath them. You can get just a simple plastic underlay sheet and that would provide adequate protection. You could spend a bit more and get a noise reduction underlay that would protect your flooring from moisture and also help prevent squeaking. This costs only slightly more and is a much better investment in your floors future.
Glueless laminate flooring is easy, durable, fashionable, and affordable. You can easily go wrong with hardwood and be stuck with it. Laminate is easy to remove if you decide later on that it's not for you.
