Solid parquet or laminate flooring: which is right for your home

What the material actually is

Solid parquet is a single piece of wood, usually oak, from wear layer to base. Engineered parquet is a thinner wood veneer, a few millimetres thick, bonded to a plywood or HDF core; it looks and feels like the same wood but uses less of it. Both are real timber and react to humidity, though engineered parquet does so less than solid.

Laminate is not wood at all. It is a compressed fibreboard core with a printed image of wood grain under a hard plastic wear layer. The pattern repeats across a pack of boards, and no amount of sanding will change that, because there is no wood beneath the picture to reveal.

Which costs less over time, not just at the till

Laminate is cheaper to buy and to fit, and for a rental flat or a first home on a tight budget that matters. A pack costs a fraction of parquet, and fitting is quick because boards click together over a floating underlay without glue or nails.

Parquet costs more upfront, but a well-maintained solid or engineered floor can be sanded and refinished several times over its life, each time looking new again for the cost of a day's sanding rather than a full replacement. Laminate cannot be renewed this way, so its lifespan is fixed at purchase: once the wear layer is through, the floor is replaced, not refreshed.

What happens when the floor gets scratched or wet

A scratch in laminate goes through the printed layer to the fibreboard beneath, and it stays visible; deep gouges expose the board's true colour, which is nothing like the picture on top. Standing water is worse: laminate's fibreboard core swells and does not recover, so a leak left overnight under a fridge or by a balcony door often means replacing several boards.

Parquet scratches too, but a light scratch disappears with a sand and a fresh coat of oil or lacquer, since the colour goes all the way through the wood. It is not waterproof either, and standing water will still cup or darken the boards, but a quick wipe-up causes far less lasting damage than it does to laminate.

• Laminate: scratches show the board underneath and cannot be sanded out
• Laminate: standing water swells the core, often permanently
• Parquet: light scratches sand out because the colour runs through
• Parquet: not waterproof, but tolerates a quick spill far better

Which suits an old wooden house, which suits a panel block

In a 1930s wooden house in Kalamaja or Nõmme, the original floorboards under later coverings are often worth uncovering and sanding rather than hiding beneath something new; where that is not possible, engineered parquet nailed or glued to timber joists moves with the building in a way laminate, sitting on a floating underlay, does not always manage as well over uneven old boards.

In a Soviet-era panel block or a newer development, the base floor is concrete, flat and stable, which suits both materials equally well. Here the choice comes down more to budget and to whether underfloor heating is fitted, since not every parquet is rated for it and the supplier's specification needs checking either way.

Which is quieter and softer underfoot

Laminate over a hard floating underlay tends to sound hollow underfoot and can carry footstep noise into the flat below, which matters in an older panel block with thin party floors and where the apartment association's house rules may set a minimum underlay standard for exactly this reason.

Parquet, especially glued or nailed rather than floated, sits closer to the base floor and generally sounds and feels more solid, with less of the drum-like echo. Wood is also a touch warmer to bare feet than laminate's plastic surface, which is noticeable in an unheated hallway on a winter morning.

The choice we would make

For a rental flat, a short-term budget, or a room getting hard daily wear such as a hallway, laminate does the job at a price that makes sense, provided spills are wiped up promptly. For a living room or bedroom in a home the owner plans to keep, engineered parquet is usually the better spend, since the ability to sand and refinish it stretches the cost over decades rather than years.

We fit both, and our flooring work starts from 15 € per job for smaller repairs and replacements, with a fixed quote given once we have seen the room or a few photos. If the flooring is part of a wider renovation, that sits under our flat renovation work, from 180 € per job, quoted the same way.