Laminates vs veneer
The first question one gets when designing home, whether to use laminate or veneer to decorate the house?Both are great surfaces for interiors, laminates are used for colourful décor and veneers are traditionally used when the wooden finish is needed for the furniture. Decormyplace is the best place for laminate or veneer requirement in interior designing.
Laminate
Laminate is basically a paper product, multiple papers soaked in resin are placed on each other and pressed under heavy pressing machine to create single sheet. The upper layer decides the shade and finish of laminates and the base brown layer is supporting layer to give strength to the sheet.
There are various types of finishes of laminates like SF – suede finish, glossy laminates, various textures like marble, granite, metal are available in market. Now a days with the help of latest technology scratch resistance laminates have been introduced by few of the companies. The very recent development in the laminate industry is the PVC laminates, these are PVC sheets exactly look like laminates and they help in hiding the brown edges of traditional laminate as these sheets have uniform colour across their thickness.
There are various reputed brands in India for laminates like Merino, Greenlam, Century, Airolam, Sunmicaetc.
Laminate Advantages
One of the cheapest options of surface material for interiors industry
Large number of designs, finish, colour are available
Easy to maintain
Laminate Disadvantages
Brown edge of the laminate is visible on the corners
Sometimes if the pasting is not done properly leads to bubbles
Many a time’s cracks are noticed on the corners
Sharp edges may cause some inconvenience for the usersVeneers
Veneers
Veneer is basically a natural product as the word suggest extracted from the trees especially like teak, cherry, pine, oak, maple etc. Very thin layers are extracted from tree trunk and are pasted on thick base to get 2-4 mm thick sheets generally 4×8 sq. ft. Veneers are used when there is need of natural wood type finish for the furniture. There are various companies which are quite active in veneer manufacturing like Real veneers, Century, Mayur etc.
Veneer Advantages
It doesn’t leave any sharp or unfinished edges
Gives option to polish in various shades on the same surface
Gives rich feel to surfaces as compared to laminates
Veneer Disadvantages
Generally expensive than laminates
Need polishing and as its manual process may lead to some errors in surface preparation
Need maintenance
Get damaged in wet weather quite easily