The American National Standards Institute's recent approval of residential laminate flooring performance standards developed by the North American Laminate Flooring Association in some ways marks the maturation of the laminate product segment in the United States.
Now, laminate floors have an accepted benchmark of performance and quality -- comparable to standards previously instituted for related products such as hardwood flooring, carpet and resilient floors -- to which manufacturers can aspire and upon which consumers may confidently rely. No longer an unfamiliar upstart product from Europe, laminates in less than a decade have solidly established their place in the U.S. flooring market.