Laminate Flooring
Laminate is the most forgiving flooring to live on and the least forgiving to install badly. It is a floating floor — the planks lock to each other, not to the subfloor — which makes it fast to put down and completely dependent on two things being right underneath and around it.
Get those two right and it stays flat and quiet for years. Get them wrong and it telegraphs every flaw in the floor beneath it.
The subfloor decides the result
A floating floor cannot bridge a dip. Where the subfloor is low, the planks span the gap and flex every time someone walks over them — that is the hollow click people describe as “the floor feels cheap.” Where it is high, the joints get stressed and eventually separate.
So the floor comes up, and the subfloor gets checked and corrected before anything new goes down: high spots ground off, low spots filled and leveled, loose boards refastened, and any soft or water-damaged section replaced rather than covered.
Moisture matters as much as flatness, especially on ground-level slabs. Concrete releases moisture for a long time, and laminate over a damp slab swells at the edges. Slabs get an underlayment with a vapor barrier — it is not optional here, whatever the box says.
Expansion gaps and why they are not sloppiness
Laminate expands and contracts with humidity, as a whole floor, in every direction. It has to be able to move.
That means a gap around the entire perimeter, hidden under the baseboard or a bead of trim, and a break at doorways on large runs. Installed tight to the walls — which looks neater on day one — the floor has nowhere to go, and on the first humid stretch it lifts in the middle or buckles at a seam. That failure is not a defect in the product.
It also means the planks acclimate in the room for a couple of days before installation, at the temperature and humidity they will live in.
Where it fits, and where it does not
Laminate is a practical, honest choice for living rooms, bedrooms, hallways, offices and most kitchens — hard-wearing, quiet underfoot with the right underlayment, and far less expensive than hardwood.
We will tell you where it is the wrong material: full bathrooms and laundry rooms, where standing water eventually reaches the core no matter how good the click joint is. Tile is the right answer in those rooms, and we would rather say so up front than replace your floor in three years.
Transitions and trim — where installations look amateur
The plank field is the easy part. What separates a clean job from an obvious one is the edges:
- Doorways — thresholds cut to the frame, not butted against it
- Door jambs — undercut so the plank slides beneath, instead of a scribed cut with a visible gap
- Around cabinets and stairs — tight, consistent, no filler
- Baseboard and quarter round — reinstalled to hide the expansion gap without pinning the floor down
We do the trim and paint touch-ups that finish it off rather than leaving them to somebody else.
What it looks like while we are there
Removing the old floor is the loud and dusty part, especially if there is tile or adhesive under it. Installation itself is quick and relatively quiet — a room a day is a reasonable expectation once the subfloor is sound.
The room needs to be empty. If furniture needs moving, that can be part of the job; just mention it when you call so the day is planned for it.
Across the Bay Area
We install laminate flooring in San Rafael, Tiburon, Mill Valley and across Marin, in San Francisco, and out through Berkeley, Orinda, Walnut Creek and Vallejo.
Call with the rooms and rough square footage, and tell us what is on the floor now and whether it is over a slab or a raised foundation. That is what determines the prep — and the prep is what determines the price.