Laminate Flooring Guide

Laminate Flooring: Glue vs. Glueless

The desire to enhance the look and feel of your home with laminate flooring is gaining strength over the past few years. Sales of laminate flooring continue to grow due to its handy and convenient method of application. Manufacturers are providing laminates which replicate other admired flooring options such as ceramic and terracotta.

Initially, laminate flooring used to have only one method of installation. The tongue and grooves were locked together with the help of glue. However, recent technological advancements have made it possible for manufacturers to provide laminate flooring with no application of glue.

Glueless laminate flooring has been very successful due to changing consumer preferences. It has completely changed the flooring market. It is a rapidly growing segment within the industry. There are various brands of glueless laminates available in the big DIY stores.

Glueless laminate flooring has led to a significant decrease in the time period needed for installation. The product is also portable - the floor can be taken apart and laid in another place.

Glueless requires no glue cleanup. In glued laminates, drops of glue squeeze out of the tongue and groove joints and this has be cleaned up with a wet cloth or scraped off on drying.

Glueless requires no waiting time for floor to get dried while in glued laminate flooring, you are not allowed to walk or rest furniture on it for 24-36 hours after installation.

The dried glue would pull dirt and dust towards itself and get discolored but glueless has no such issues.

The installation method for both glued and glueless laminate flooring is almost similar except for the tongue and groove mechanism used in glueless planks that does not need glue.

The table given below briefly outlines the major differences between glueless and glued laminate flooring:

Glueless	Glued
Can be installed in almost 50% of the time taken for glued laminates	Takes much more time for installation
No time required for drying up	Takes several hours to dry up
Can be easily cleaned up	Requires glue-caked spreaders or rags
Can be reused by re-assembling it	Considerable damage occurs in reusing them
Manufacturers give lifetime warranty for joint integrity	No such warranty

There are people who are satisfied by glued laminate flooring but it is difficult to visualize a world without glueless laminate flooring. Glueless laminates are much easier to install and offer better results.