One of the greatest advantages of laminate flooring is the sheer selection of different patterns you can have on it. While real wood flooring comes in one look ? that is, wood ? laminate can have almost anything on it. It is, after all, just a picture printed on a piece of fibreboard, and it?s not difficult to get photos of different materials, even very exotic ones. Wood effect floors are obviously the most popular, but they don?t necessarily have to be natural-looking wood. Many people go for wood-effect floors in odd colours, such as blue or black, or ones that fit together to make a big picture that would never occur in nature. After wood patterns, the second most popular thing to have on laminate is stone. Stone-pattern laminate can be surprisingly convincing if it is well printed and put together, and gives your home a great ?old castle? look and feel. You don?t get the uneven surface of stone, but then again many people see that as an advantage over real stone ? and the floor doesn?t get really cold in the winter, either! Ceramic is another popular option, especially when it has been fitted with a damp-proof membrane for use in bathrooms and kitchens. It recreates the look of a tile floor, but without the dangers of slipping when it gets wet, or the tendency of tiles to collect dirt and other nasty things in the cracks between them. But there are plenty of designs that are more unusual than this ? far too many to list here, in fact. The best thing to do is to go down to your local laminate flooring showroom, where they will have a whole range of products, from the realistic to the simply ridiculous. Once you realise that you?re no longer limited about what your floor could look like, it can be very liberating from a design point of view.