I can not help it. When I hear the term laminate flooring I think of a 1970s kitchen or laundry room that has aged yellow laminate floors in an ugly square or diamond pattern. Even though that term no longer means anything so hideous, that's what I think of every time.
Actually, I have laminate floors in my house. In my laundry room we have a gray laminate in that standard square pattern, but it's not ugly. It was a reminder that we got at Menards for $ 15 and it fit perfectly in our laundry room. I love to tell people that I have a $ 15 floor.
In the kitchen we have very nice laminate wood floors. This means it looks like wood, but it is the fake stuff that is quickly snapped together in large panels and then trimmed out at the edges. It's very nice and we had dozens of colors and grains to choose from. Armstrong is one of the most popular brands of laminate wood floors. Our may actually be an off brand, but even that is good. It was very easy to install. My husband did it in a single day. It floats on a padded subfloor and sits away from the walls by about a quarter inch. Then to cover the gaps we put in quarter round baseboards. The result is a very nice floor for very little money compared to real wood and no installation cost since we did it ourselves. We did glue the panels together since the kitchen is a room that gets a lot of moisture on the floors, mostly from spills. We did not want that water to get under the floor and rot from the bottom so we glued the pieces as well as snapping them together.
Everyone tells me how great the kitchen looks. The floor is a slightly lighter color than the cabinets, all are a medium tone. It looks and feels warm and inviting.