This eliminates drafts and helps keep heat in the room from escaping.

Even when laid directly onto joists, the insulation is very good and no cold can be felt coming through the joints.

The noise of wood floors is also minimal when fitted properly. When laminate floor had just come out this was often fitted without any or adequate underlay. This made the flooring very noisy as there was a hollow void between the existing sub floor and the new laminate floor.

Since laminate flooring is made from high density fiberboard rather than real wood, the noise was louder than that of real wood. It would often sound very hard and noisy with the taps of steps heard constantly.

Wood floor has more natural sound insulation and when installed properly the sound is minimal.

When using an engineered board the most common method is to float the floor by gluing the tongue and groove. As this creates a gap between the two floors it needs something in between to soak up the noise. This is where the underlay is used. The underlays range from a basic 2mm foam which can soak up the majority of the sound to the high density underlays which have been proven to have high acoustic properties and keep the noise to a minimum.

Generally the price dictates the quality of the underlay but be careful to choose a wood floor underlay rather than a carpet underlay as these are not suitable for wood floors.

A good product to use is the Envoy-Sonic acoustic underlay sound insulation as it can be used on solid, engineered or laminated wooden floors with under floor heating. This underlay is also impact resistant and very versatile.

With solid wood floors, the boards are installed by either gluing down directly or by nailing down an existing sub floor. As a result there is no space between the two so the flooring is silenced much more.

Written by Ruth Shann ? Expert in wooden flooring and finishing since 1999.