How laminate flooring is made
Laminate flooring is mostly wood waste, with a photograph of wood fused on top.
- stations
- 6
- things upstream
- 60
- raw sources
- 19
- steps from the ground
- 8
The short version
Sawdust and wood chips are ground, mixed with resin and pressed into dense fiberboard. A high-resolution photo of wood grain is printed on resin-soaked paper. The core, a stabilizing backing, the photo layer and a clear wear layer are stacked and pressed together under heat until the resin sets. The big sheet is cut into planks with locking edges.
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Press the fiberboard core
Sawdust, chips and other leftovers from wood factories are ground up, mixed with melamine resin and dried, then formed into panels of high-density fiberboard. This is the thick middle layer that gives the plank its strength.
6 to 12 mm thick
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Print the wood-grain photo
A sharp photograph of a plank, or of tile or stone, is printed on paper. The paper is soaked in melamine resin so it will fuse with the layers around it.
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Add the backing sheet
A backing sheet of paper or melamine plastic goes on the underside to balance the top layers and keep the plank from warping. It also blocks moisture rising from the floor below.
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Add the clear wear layer
The top is a clear coating of melamine, aluminum oxide, or both. It takes the scuffs and scratches so the picture underneath stays intact.
Goes in -
Stack and hot-press
Core, backing, photo and wear layer are stacked and pressed with great force at nearly 400 degrees Fahrenheit, so the resin cures into a solid plastic. In the one-step direct-pressure method this all happens at once.
over 600 psi, nearly 400 °F
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Cut planks and locking edges
The large pressed boards are cut into planks. Special cutters shape tongues and grooves on all four edges, so planks snap into each other.
Worth repeating
- Direct-pressure laminate is made in one pressing, while high-pressure laminate presses its top layers separately onto kraft paper first, at over 1000 psi.
- Laminate's clear top coat is often advertised as the second hardest substance after diamond, and that claim is not quite right.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and laminate flooring starts as these 19 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How laminate flooring is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/laminate-floor