A Brief History of Laminate Flooring
Laminate flooring has become one of the most popular flooring materials in the world; its easy installations, affordability, variety and low maintenance has seen to that. Despite its popularity, however, laminate doesn’t have a particularly long history – in fact it is only a few decades long. As any professionals in laminate flooring in Crows Nest and laminate flooring in Sydney will agree, this kind of flooring has made a big impact in the industry in such a short time. Here’s a brief history of laminate flooring; 1977 In 1977 a Swedish company called Perstorp invented laminate flooring and sold it under the brand name Pergo. After great success they then completely split their flooring division and made a new company called Pergo. The company is still a subsidiary of Pfleiderer and Pergo flooring is still an incredibly popular laminate flooring brand around the world. The first laminate floors were quite costly and their manufacturing processes were pretty timeconsuming; they had a tongue and groove fitting system that meant they had to be glued together and then strapped to ensure all the joints on the floor were neat. 1989 In 1989 the first Direct Pressure Laminate (DPL) was produced. 1990 – 1996 New styles of laminate started to make their way into the market, such as stone which was more creative than the original. 1997 In 1997 there was finally progress from this form of laminate flooring manufacturing was a glueless laminate flooring which sold under the brand names of Alloc and Fiboloc, and was developed by Swedish company Välinge Aluminium (now known as Välinge Innovation). This was called the ‘click’ system. A Belgium company called Unilin also developed a similar system at a concurrent time. This resulted in many legal battles and the conflict took many years to settle. The outcome is that now most glueless locking flooring is under license of either of these companies and in some cases, by both of them.