Making Sense of Wear Resistance & AC Ratings for Laminate Flooring

Some technical and marketing terms used in the flooring industry can be confusing or misleading for the consumer. The term “Abrasion Class, or AC rating (AC1-AC6),” is a classification from the European standard EN 13329 to describe “wear resistance” of laminate flooring. Even though, the North American standard for laminate flooring NALFA-LF-01 does not use AC rating classification, the AC rating has become over the years widely use in the marketing of laminate flooring. Abrasion class is only one component of product durability; other properties such as impact and stain resistance also come into play when describing how durable a laminate flooring product really is.

From a warranty perspective, laminate flooring manufacturers define wear resistance as the loss of the wear layer so that the décor image has been worn through. The deterioration in the aesthetics of a laminate floor due to wear will likely become unsatisfactory to the consumer long before the pattern has worn all the way through. When considering only the AC rating to determine a floor’s suitability for a particular use, few laminate flooring products wear all the way through to the pattern. For example, a consumer that has chosen an AC5 wear rated floor with high abrasion resistance may think that they have bought a product that will last for many years, but there are other factors to consider, and the consumer may not understand the trade-offs.