I'm working on a full glossary of Laminate Floor terminology. We'll have this in a regular spot once it's done, but as I go along I thought I'd post sections.   Here are links to the other pages:   Laminate Glossary A-B Laminate Glossary C Laminate Glossary D Laminate Glossary E-G Laminate Glossary H-I Laminate Glossary J-O Laminate Glossary P-R Laminate Glossary S Laminate Glossary T Laminate Glossary U-the end        

Laminate Flooring Glossary of Terms: D

Décor Layer - This is the combined top layer of a laminate floor. It's the picture or pattern you chose because you liked its look as covered by a transparent, protective layer, so to your eyes it is “the top” but technically it's two layers.

Décor Paper - For laminate floors this is the image part of a floor. Usually it’s a very sharp photograph of a specific style of wood plank, but it can also resemble stone tiling or other styles of flooring. The paper is impregnated with a resin and heated to cure so that the resulting sheet is extremely durable. This strong décor paper plus the protective coating combine to make the Décor Layer above.

Deep Embossed Hand Scraped Texture - This is one of our terms. In hardwood, hand-scraping goes back hundreds of years. Artisans textured the tops of the wood planks individually for decorative purposes. This phrase describes laminate floors that have deliberate, pleasant grooves in the surface to replicate the look and feel of a well sanded and polished hand-scraped hardwood floor.

Deflection - This is the term for the bending of any material which is suspended between supports when a weight is placed upon it somewhere in between those supports. For example, if you put out two chairs and rested a board with one end on each seat, then stepped onto the board, if the board bended as you stepped onto it, the bend would be called deflection.

Delamination - This is a defect or type of damage to a laminate floor. It describes what is happening when the décor layer either peels off or loses adhesion from the rest of the floor panel.

Density - A physics term: a substance’s mass per unit of volume in specific conditions of pressure and temperature. You probably won’t see it listed in a lot of laminate floors’ specs because what we really want to know – how tough it is – is expressed through AC ratings, but if it's present you should see it expressed as pounds per cubic foot (lb/ft3) or kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m3)

Depression - It would be similar to a dent, but perhaps without any cracking or breaking of the surface, though technically dents also fall into this category of damage.

Dimensional Stability - This refers to any floor plank’s ability to resist changing shape or size due to temperature and/or humidity. Solid hardwood usually has pretty low dimensional stability because it shrinks and expands quite a bit when those conditions change. On the other hand our loose lay vinyl is designed not to expand or contract at all, so it has a very high dimensional stability. Its dimensions, length and width, are stable. There is quite a range among the different floor types.

Direct coating – This is another term for the more commonly used Direct Pressure Laminate (DPL) explained below.

Direct Laminate Flooring - The technical definition is “A flooring product in which resin impregnated material layers are permanently bonded to a core.” I think we now just call this “Laminate Flooring,” as there don’t seem to be any other kinds of it.

Direct Pressure Laminate (DPL) - It’s one of two main methods of laminate production, the other being High Pressure Laminate (HPL). DPL laminates have 4 layers instead of HPL’s 5, and the layers are bound together in a single step via 300 to 500 pounds per square inch of pressure at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Of the two, this is the most common process for laminate production, making floors which fall between AC1 and AC4 or classes 21-32 for their durability ratings. They are also more flexible than HPLs, so there are more styles and colors available with this process.

DPL (Direct Pressure Laminate) – (up one spot)

Disposal – Since laminate floors are made of natural materials, any leftover laminate flooring can be disposed of with your normal household garbage. The bulk of a laminate floor is primarily made from the sawdust and bits of wood used in other construction, you see. Now, a completely removed floor should be taken directly to a waste disposal site because all of that wood is going to rot.

Distressed Look – This is often combined with hand-scraped flooring, and that makes sense on a shopping category page, but the looks are slightly different. Distressed flooring basically looks like it has been whapped with wires. The effect is that of lines and thin grooves on the surface here and there, often in groups. Hand-scraped floors have wider, more fluid grooves and something of a wavy style to the surface. With laminates both are done artificially. The benefits are having the look with the durability benefits of a laminate floor, and having the looks with a smoother surface (so no threat of splinters). For some pictures, you should see this blog piece we wrote: What is Handscraped Hardwood Flooring?

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David is has written and made videos about flooring products and installation since 2011 at Floors To Your Home (.com), where he is also the PPC Manager, a Researcher, a Website & Marketing Strategy Team member, Videographer, Social Strategist, Photographer and all around Resource Jito. In my spare time I shoot and edit video, put together a podcast, explore film history, and mix music (as in ‘play with Beatles multi-tracks’). Connect with  W. David Lichty

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