What lies beneath: underlayment for laminate flooring

What you will learn: Subtle benefit of underlayment for a laminate floor; how underlayment affects the experience of walking on a laminate floor; how underlayment affects how sound is carried on a laminate floor; how underlayment can help to even out a subfloor

A simple, yet vital addition to your laminate floor or engineered hardwood flooring project is a layer of quality underlayment. Something as simple as an underlayment is easily taken for granted, but it will serve your flooring for as long as the flooring itself will serve you. Find out how.

The addition of an underlayment is a requirement of any laminate floor project, and can also be a requirement of an engineered hardwood floor as well when the engineered hardwood flooring is not directly glued down to your concrete subfloor. But the reasons for this go beyond the simple convention that these types of installations demand. A good underlayment serves a number of functions in your laminate floor or engineered hardwood flooring project. Let’s take a look at some of the major benefits a good underlayment will add to the experience of laying down, and walking on, your choice of laminate flooring.

A spring in your step

On the most basic level, underlayment subtly adds a level comfort to the sensation of walking on a floating floor – a floating floor being any floor that is not directly fastened to a subfloor. Underlayment adds a level of "springiness" that most of us take for granted until the experience is absent. Comfort levels in a home or office can be paramount to an overall positive experience of living or working within that space. With the simple addition of the underlayment layer, this level of comfort is well in hand. The difference may not be a dramatic one, but has a cumulative benefit.

No drums please

Another benefit of a good underlayment is its sound-proofing qualities, particularly for use with laminate flooring. When you float a floor, there is a gap between the laminate floor and the subfloor which effectively creates a resonating chamber, an amplifier of sound. This can create an environment where your floor, but for the inclusion of an underlayment, becomes an unintended percussion instrument and footfalls can be louder than you’d normally expect. When trying to create a space where sound must be minimized, an underlayment can serve as a means to deaden the sound to a degree that it ceases to be a potential distraction. Once again, this is a factor which many take for granted, but would definitely notice as a problem were it not for the contribution a good underlayment in an interior flooring space such as a hallway where one can expect a lot of traffic.

Getting even

Although it is a very subtle benefit, underlayment can add its influence to the evenness of the subfloor surface. One of the prerequisites of a good subfloor which will support your flooring project is that the subfloor must be as flat as possible. Along with being clean and dry, this is an absolute must for your subfloor before you even consider laying down a laminate floor, engineered hardwood flooring, or indeed any type of flooring. A good underlayment is a great finishing touch to the effort of evening out a subfloor, often serving as a way to even out the slight irregularities on the surface which may have been missed when evening out some of the more obvious irregularities earlier on.

As a means to create a level of comfort as well as a way to reduce the sound of footfalls, a good underlayment can really add value to your project, even though its contributions are often viewed as being secondary to the beauty of your floor. Underlayment is a vital part of a laminate floor or engineered hardwood flooring project that is intended to last.

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