Explore Design Possibilities with Laminate Carpentry
Renovating your home is never an easy process, it is a journey that you would embark on with an interior designer and sometimes may span over a period of 3-6 months depending on the project size. During this extended journey, there are many different decisions that need to be made.
While you should consult with the best interior design company in Singapore, having a firm understanding of what you hope to achieve with your allocated renovation budgets is recommended so that as homeowners you are sufficiently educated to make the best decisions. Along with your long to-do lists when preparing for your renovations are choosing the laminates for your carpentry.
Laminates are an integral portion of your carpentry - they instantly contribute to the overall aesthetic finish of your final renovation. Choosing laminates however can be more intimidating than you may expect, the following are a few tips and tricks to keep you informed and make the right decision.
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What exactly are laminates?
Laminates come in many different forms and are often created through extensive processes of applying high amounts of pressure to wood-based raw materials. They are used as the finishing touch for many carpentry works because of the many aesthetical benefits that it has.
The top-most layer of the laminate is often finished with a decorative texture, colour or pattern, creating that much-needed final touch to accentuate modern interior designs. If you were to categorize the many different types of laminates, you can classify them into the following groups: High Pressure Laminates, Compact Laminates, Post form and Decorative Laminates.
Each of these has its various characteristics and should be applied differently in your interior design. Of all these laminate types, high pressure laminates are the types that you would find most often in modern-day carpentry work. During your journey of building and designing your dream home, choosing laminates for your carpentry can become one of the most enjoyable but difficult tasks. Most of the time your interior designers in Singapore would have swatch samples of laminates readily available for you to select and compare. To the trained eye, however, there is more than just colour that should be taken into consideration when choosing laminates.
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Choosing Laminates
Laminates are commercially available in large sheets, usually coming in the 8-feet by 4-feet size. We strongly advise homeowners to choose laminates very carefully, while relatively inexpensive, different textures and patterns may exude huge differences in the final design. To do so, we would always strongly recommend that homeowners look at full-sized laminates when choosing something with a pattern. This would be the best way to curate the full interior design that would be applied to their carpentry. Many reputable laminate companies have a showroom or a factory space that would allow you to view laminates in their 8 by 4-foot size, take a trip down and better choose your laminates with peace of mind.
Besides choosing laminates for their wide array of designer finishes, modern-day laminates come with many other properties too. Some of these features include anti-fingerprint technology and antimicrobial resistance.
When choosing laminates for wet or highly utilized areas in the house, it might be beneficial for homeowners to choose something that is either matte-finished or anti-fingerprint. In such environments, wet or oily palms would leave those unsought fingerprints on laminate surfaces, and these stains need to be cleaned extensively. Choosing something with anti-fingerprint properties would be able to solve this problem instantly.
Next, with the current global healthcare situation, hygiene in and outside of our homes has become an increased priority for many people. Laminate companies as a response have come up with antimicrobial series of laminates to facilitate that cleaner environment at home that every homeowner should be able to achieve.
Laminates are the main surfaces of our carpentry that are exposed to touch, therefore laminates having antimicrobial properties give homeowners that much-needed peace of mind. Some companies have even been able to achieve up to 99% percent microbial-free properties – any germs or microbes that come into contact with these treated surfaces would be instantly terminated. Take this into consideration when choosing laminates for your home too!
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Maintenance of Laminates
Like everything else in your home, laminates are also subject to wear and tear. Now that you have chosen your laminates and gotten your dream renovation done, the team at Swiss Interior would like to share our fool-proof tips on how to ensure that you can enjoy your laminates for many years to come.
Laminates that are constantly exposed to sunlight are often prone to discolouration over the years. Couple this with the extra humid weather we have here in Singapore, and this might just be a laminate disaster just waiting to happen. While there is unfortunately not much we can do to change our weather, putting up blinds or using humidifiers in our enclosed areas would help us get the most out of our laminates. Every little effort goes a long way when it comes to preserving our carpentry work especially for designs like rustic style that uses a lot of wood and no effort is too small.
Overexposure to moisture or water can also result in our laminates deteriorating faster than they should. While we need to keep our surfaces clean, ensure that we dry up laminate surfaces as fast as we can as well. Laminates are often composed of wood-based materials and such materials do not perform very well in damp environments. Try using alternative cleaning solutions, such as slightly damp cloths or even microfiber solutions to preserve your laminates for a much longer duration!
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When it comes to laminating in HDB kitchens interior designing, this can be a very tricky situation indeed. Kitchens are exposed to lots of oil, heat and even water. Constant exposure to such conditions exponentially speeds up the deterioration of our laminates. Using a cloth soaked in warm water and your everyday kitchen cleaning product is one of the best ways to keep these surfaces clean. The more you use your kitchen to cook, the more you should clean in order to avoid discolouration or even any unwanted peeling of laminates.
At the end of the day, the team at Swiss Interior hopes to make your renovation process as seamless and enjoyable as possible. We are also one of the top interior design firms in Singapore. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty details such as choosing your laminates, always remember that our interior designers are ready to help. Let us know what you think or highlight your concerns to us, we will be sure to serve you to the best of our ability!
About Swiss Interior
Swiss Interior is a leading interior design company in Singapore since 2012. Led by founders Jason and Ronnie, the Swiss team serves customers from all walks of life, delivering bespoke and dream interior design and renovation services to all homeowners in Singapore.
Accreditations & Awards:
- Singapore outstanding enterprise award (2013)
- HomeRenoGuru Most Trusted ID (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)
- First ID firm to win 1 Week Kitchen Challenge by HomeRenoGuru (2019)
- Featured in NOC RenoKing (2020)
- HomeRenoGuru Top 10 ID Firm (2020, 2021)
- Featured in CNA Lifestyle Making Room (2021)
- Qanvast SuperTrust (2021, 2022)
- Featured in HomeStyle Magazine Year End Cover Page (2021)
- Featured in Sheikh Haikel & Anna Belle Francis DreamHome (2022)
- Sidac Accreditation (2022)