Floating Floors and Carpet

Q: Can you put a laminate floor over carpet?
Abohanna
A: This is a pretty common question. The answer is “no,” but lets get into a deeper explanation of why. Although laminate is installed using the floating method, which allows the floor to be installed over the top of a subfloor without anchoring to the subfloor, carpet is not a suitable substrate. I have frequently had the question of “will carpet padding work as underlayment?” with customers who have called in to our call center here at iFLOOR. This is again an answer of “no.” Due to how carpet and carpet padding are made, they are too soft to work as a suitable underlayment for floating floors. Simply put, they are not dense enough to fit floating installation specs.
End result, to install a beautiful new laminate floor into your home, you will need to remove the carpet, carpet padding and tack strip in order to get a clean subfloor, then you can install your underlayment (I’m a big fan of 3mm cork) and then install your laminate.
As a side note, there are a few hard surfaces you can install over using floating installations. Pre-existing hardwood floors, tile, vinyl and linoleum all can act as suitable substrates as long as you use a good underlayment (Sound 6 or cork being the preference here). In the case of tile, its suggested to level out the grout lines with the tile itself as best you can to ensure your floor will lie nice and flat and reduce possibility of issue.