Q: Can you tell me what the best laminate you sell for the kitchen? Do any of your brands have paraffin wax sealed joints?
Thanks,
Bridgette N.
A: The “best” laminate is part fact part opinion. To avoid the opinion part, I’ll suggest a few that have performed well in testing we have done. Pergo Select, Quick Step Eligna and Perspective and Westhollow Vise-loc all performed rather well for durability and moisture resistance. There are a few others whom have performed well, but those tend to be the top tier laminate choices.
As far as paraffin wax sealed joints are concerned I went to Ryan W., iFLOOR.com’s VP of Products, to get an in depth answer for you. Ryan mentioned that wax sealing the edges of flooring was done long ago and isn’t done much today. I actually got quite the interesting history lesson about the evolution of laminate when it comes to moisture resistance.
After using paraffin wax to seal edges, companies began to paint on oils or something similar to seal the edges of laminate. Ryan mentioned he could distinctly remember seeing boxes of flooring where the sides of the boxes had soaked up some oil, similar to butter soaking into the buckets of popcorn you get at a movie theater – not a pretty sight. After this oil process, manufacturers began adding moisture resistant chemicals directly to the core of laminate during manufacture. This is still done today so nowadays the entire core of laminate is moisture resistant and not just the edges. This is great when cuts are made as the cut edge is just as resistant. Keep in mind no wood flooring is water proof, but they are moisture resistant.
It used to be that the green cored laminate contained moisture resistant additives, but nowadays any color core board can hold these additives, so as Steve always says “Buyer beware” and make sure the laminate you purchase contains these additives and not just that the core is a specific color.
The brands and collections I mentioned all have such additives, so I would look into those as good flooring choices for your kitchen. Also make sure to use a good underlayment.
