What are Melamine Doors?

As a showroom consultant at the Clayton showroom of Damco kitchens, I am quite often presented with the opportunity to face a huge variety of Clint base. I just thought of sharing my first hand experiences on one of the most common questions that I get asked. “What are melamine doors?” The following content will explain melamine doors in great detail but a very simple version so it is easy to understand.

Firstly I would start with pointing out few things to lookout when choosing melamine doors.

1. The substrate (MDF/Particle board), should be of a superior quality and not cheap imports.
2. It should be pressed as medium pressure laminates and not glued like foils. To be safe only use locally produced melamine brands for example – laminex, polytec etc.
3. Quality of edging.

It is very obvious that melamine is part of our daily life, it is known for a lot of its properties like scratch resistance, durability, temperature and moist resistance and above all it’s very economical.

Basics on melamine.

• Melamine is thermal-fused, resin- saturated paper finish bonded onto a particle board or MDF core and they are most widely used product for doors. Melamine doors are decorative paper which are made from moisture resistant MDF or Particle board, in a range of surface finish options like matt, texture and gloss along with a huge variety of colours and patterns. They are only available in square edged profile.

Melamine board can only have flat surfaced doors and it is not possible to router any kind of design or profiles unlike vinyl or 2 pac.

Melamine comes in two different substrates. MDF and Particleboard.

Difference: Particle board is made from small chips or particles of softwood which are combined with a synthetic resin and bonded by applying pressure and heat, on the other hand MDF is produced by combining fine timber fibres with resin, and heat and pressure are then applied to produce a smooth board.

• Two types of laminates :
  • High pressure laminate (HPL)
  • Low pressure laminates (LPL)

Difference: High pressure laminate (HPL) is pressured together at high pressure and high temperature and the hard laminates sheets are glued on a wood substrate using an adhesive, whereas low pressure laminate (LPL) which are commonly referred as melamine are manufactured by pressing paper impregnated with melamine resin directly onto a particleboard or fibreboard substrates. No adhesive is needed for this as the resin literally fuses the paper onto the board, this process works with low pressure and high temperature.

• Melamine edging: The usual way to edge band melamine is with matching 1mm PVC edging. It is one of the biggest factor that should be considered while making a decision on who would you get to do your kitchen renovation, if you have chosen to get melamine doors.

At Damco Kitchens, we use the most advanced and innovative technology to process our melamine doors, which ensures a superior quality finish and significantly higher durability. Our customers can be assured and have peace of mind that they will be getting the best possible finish on the edges of their melamine doors. Please feel free to visit our showroom to physically see our melamine doors.

Vast majority of kitchen companies use inferior technology to edge melamine doors, merely because they either don’t specialise in melamine doors or they simply cannot justify the cost of the technology due to low volumes of work, which has given us an extra ordinary competitive edge when it comes down to quality of melamine doors that we do at Damco Kitchens.

Hopefully my articles being useful to most of you.

Please contact us at (03) 9544 0210 or log on to www.damcokitchens.com.au for more information about kitchens Melbourne.