Laminate Flooring for Staircase: The Benefits and Secrets

Picking out your next flooring for your stairs? Consider laminate flooring for staircase. Perhaps this is not something you had contemplated, or maybe you’re weighing up your options still. Either way, laminate flooring for a staircase is an unusual concept but could become mainstream. Laminate is known for its practicality, its aesthetic, and its affordability, making it a great option for your stairs, as well as elsewhere in the house.

Benefits

Feeling handy?

One of the great things about laminate is that it is DIY friendly. Usually, fitting flooring to your stairs would be a challenge due to the intricate shaping. Since laminate is easy to fit yourself anyway, the job doesn’t get much more complicated when it comes to staircases. Therefore, laminate flooring for staircase could be the solution to saving yourself money and keeping control over the fitting process.

With simple to fit planks of laminate, mimicking planks of wood, you can slot them together and into place with ease. Laminate is designed to be uncomplicated and painless to lay, making the installation process fast and easy. Therefore, you can’t go too far wrong when transforming your staircase by hand.

Keeping up appearances

There is no sacrifice with laminate flooring for staircases. You don’t have to reduce the look of your stairs just for practicality or suitability. Laminate offers the appearance of wooden floor without the complications.

Perfect for stairs is distressed/handscraped laminate, which can sit on the base of each step giving the appearance that you have genuine wooden stairs leading to your upper landing. These stunning laminate planks look realistic, but come with the benefit of costing less, easier maintenance, and simpler fitting than real wood would. Keep the style you want, without the hassle, cost, or upkeep.

No damages involved

If you’re looking to transform your stairs without compromising the original flooring underneath, laminate is the way to go. Carpet, as an alternative, involves a stapling and wiring process that can damage the floor it is being laid on. However, by using laminate flooring for staircases, you can eliminate the risk of that damage thanks to the ‘snap-in place’ installation design. With the quick fitting process of laminate, comes the added benefit that there are no extra complications that might puncture, scratch, or chip the underfloor.

Secrets

Managing the Maintenance

First things first, maintenance with laminate is a breeze. In every household, however, dust is bound to gather, and stairs are known for accumulating a lot of it. The simple solution to caring for your new laminate stairs, is as easy as using a vacuum cleaner to remove the dust from each step. Or equally, using a duster to sweep the dust from the stairs.

The secret to maintaining your laminate is to avoid using any steam or liquids. As laminate is made up of fibre layers, allowing too much moisture into the laminate planks might cause swelling or damage. Luckily, stairways are not known to suffer from high moisture impacts. Therefore, if you stick to hoovering rather than mopping, you’ll be just fine.

Long-lasting Look

Other than the general maintenance, there are tips on how to keep your laminate stairs looking as good as new throughout its lifetime. Traditionally, with real wood flooring the colour and appearance of the wood will diminish over time, this is not the case with laminate. In fact, one of the great things about laminate is that is stays fresh looking without much effort. However, if you want to keep it as good as new, we have some secrets to share.

Our main tip is to never wax or polish your laminate, although you might be tempted to give the floor that extra gleam, it isn’t worth your time. The floor is designed to keep its appearance looking new, therefore waxing and polishing isn’t going to add any benefit to the look. If you are looking to clean the floor thoroughly however, we recommend combining 43g ammonia with 4.5 litres of warm water. Only use a lightly damp cloth with this solution. This will remove tough stains but shouldn’t damage the flooring itself.