The 5 Best Laminate Flooring of 2023

Best Overall

Pergo TimberCraft + WetProtect Waterproof Anchor

View On Lowe's

Pergo invented laminate flooring. In 1977, Swedish company Perstorp brainstormed this novel concept and put it into the first homes three years later. The word Pergo itself became synonymous with laminate flooring. Not content to rest on its laurels, Pergo has been on the move since its inception: changing corporate hands several times, adding factories, and introducing innovative products.

Today's Pergo products have crisp, deep embossing and images and colors with close fidelity to the original material. This is manifested in products like wide laminate planks that look similar to real hardwood planks or tiles that look like travertine, marble, or slate.

Pergo's TimberCraft and TimberCraft Elite are the standout Pergo laminates due to their verisimilitude to real wood in combination with reasonable pricing. Though the TimberCraft core is compressed fiberboard, the flooring is rated as being waterproof and acceptable for steam mopping.

With high-definition imaging and deep embossing, TimberCraft not only looks like real wood but also has twice the number of uniquely imaged boards. This means less of a chance of repetitive patterning. TimberCraft offers 18 styles of wood-look laminate flooring, so you can find the right one to fit your style.

Note that Pergo TimberCraft does not have an attached underlayment. You'll need to roll out your own separate foam or acoustical fiber underlayment. One hundred square feet of foam underlayment costs about $50.

Price at time of publish: $4/square foot

_{AC Rating: 4  | Warranty: Limited lifetime | Transferable Warranty: No | Thickness: 12mm}

Best Budget

LifeProof Greystone Oak 14 mm Laminate Flooring

4.5

View On Home Depot

Waterproof laminate flooring eliminates the one factor that separates traditional laminate flooring from vinyl flooring: laminate's inability to withstand moisture. Lifeproof achieves this by substituting the chipped wood core with a rigid polymeric core.

Lifeproof aims to live up to its name as a tough, scuff-resistant AC-5 laminate that will maintain its structural integrity and will not degrade upon contact with water. This is the laminate flooring to buy for homes with pets and children. Plus, Lifeproof laminate flooring is priced at the lower end of the self-install laminate price range, making this an affordable DIY product.

Advertised as a 14mm-thick floor, Lifeproof's core and top layer equals 12mm thick. The attached underlayment contributes to the additional 2mm.

Price at time of publish: $4/square foot, $47/case

_{AC Rating: 5  | Warranty: Limited lifetime | Transferable Warranty: No | Thickness: 14mm}

Best Selection

LL Flooring Dream Home 12mm Copper Valley Chestnut w/ pad Waterproof Laminate Flooring

View On Llflooring.com

LL Flooring, the brick-and-mortar flooring retailer formerly known as Lumber Liquidators, carries a number of laminate floor brands including Bruce, Builder's Pride, and Aqua Seal. But its predominant laminate flooring brand is the LL Flooring house brand called Dream Home. Dream Home accounts for well over half of LL Flooring's laminate floor offerings.

One of the key advantages of Dream Home laminate flooring is its cost. The thick 12 mm laminate house-brand Dream Home laminate is less expensive than even thinner name-brand products. Another advantage: Since LL Flooring has over 400 brick-and-mortar locations across 47 states, buyers are able to touch and see Dream Home flooring in person.

If you live in an LL Flooring market area, you might often see ads for laminate flooring priced under $1.00 per square foot, even down to $0.79 per square foot. These ultra-cheap laminates tend have a durability rating of AC3 for high-traffic residential use and have no attached underlayment.

LL Flooring will deliver inside the home, too. Its reasonably priced white glove flat rate brings up to 10,000 pounds of laminate flooring stacked in a climate-controlled room for less than $300. That's over 240 boxes of 12 mm laminate flooring.

Price at time of publish: $4/square foot, $57/case

_{AC Rating: 3 to 4  | Warranty: Limited lifetime | Transferable Warranty: No | Thickness: 7mm to 12mm}

Best Appearance

Bruce TimberTrue Natural Wood Laminate Flooring

View On Bruce.com

The Bruce flooring name might be familiar to most homeowners since it's been a staple of big-box home improvement chains for years. Bruce is recognized mainly as a maker of wallet-friendly solid hardwood and engineered wood flooring products, not laminates. That's because Bruce has been in and out of the laminate business for a number of years—but it's back.

In 2021, Bruce introduced the TimberTru line of laminate plank flooring. With a pedigree that instills confidence, Bruce is just one brand owned by AHF Products, a holding company that also owns well-respected flooring names like Hartco, LM Flooring, Homerwood, Hearthwood, and Raintree. Competitively priced, from $2.70 to $3.70 per square foot, Bruce TimberTru uses a simple fold-and-lock method of joinery that's very DIY-friendly. The high-definition laminate planks look realistically like wood.

TimberTru's lineup is succinct and easy to understand. Basic Wonders is the lower-cost 8 mm line; Landscape Traditions and Natural World are the 12mm laminates. If you're looking for a specific species of wood—oak, maple, mahogany, walnut—you won't find it with Bruce TimberTru. Bruce's style of naming laminates—shared by Shaw Repel—is to eschew wood species and instead identify by moods or colors, like dark browns, taupes, or whites.

_{AC Rating: 3 to 4 | Warranty: 50 year | Transferable Warranty: No | Thickness: 8mm and 12mm}