AC5 appears on every Pantora product and on Prime Laminate's Legend Collection. It is a rating for the wear surface of a laminate floor, and it says less about the rest of the floor than it might seem to.
What the rating measures
AC stands for abrasion class. It comes from EN 13329, the European standard for laminate floor coverings, and grades how well a laminate's surface stands up to abrasion, impact and staining in standard tests. The higher the class, the more wear the surface is rated for. It describes the top layer: not the core beneath it, and not how the floor was installed.
AC across Topdeck's laminates
All three Pantora collections are rated AC5, recorded as heavy residential wear:
- Royal Miles: long 2260mm planks at 12mm.
- Amor: 1515 × 234 × 12mm, with 4D synchronised embossing and a nano-silent core.
- Lifestyle: 1500 × 196 × 8mm, with 4D embossed-in-register texture.
Prime Laminate, in Core, runs from AC3 to AC5 across its editions. The Legend Collection, 2200 × 239 × 12.3mm on a DynaCore+ core, is AC5.
Because every Pantora collection carries the same rating, AC is not what separates them; format and surface texture are.
What AC does not tell you
- Water. Laminate is built on a high-density fibreboard (HDF) core. The Legend Collection has a surface water-resistant construction that resists everyday spills from above, but no laminate installation forms a waterproof membrane, spills are wiped up at once, and the warranty does not permit installation in wet areas.
- Slip. Slip resistance is classed separately under AS 4586. Prime Laminate records P1 for the Deluxe Edition, P3 for Contemporary Plus, P2 for the Luxury Edition and P4 for the Legend Collection. Pantora Amor records P3.
- Fire. Critical heat flux runs from 5.8 to 8.8 kW/m² across Prime Laminate, and Pantora Amor records 9.4 kW/m².
- Cleaning. Pantora can be wet-mopped and steam-mopped, with any standing water wiped away. The Legend Collection takes a normal damp mop. The Deluxe, Contemporary Plus and Luxury Editions are never wet-mopped, damp-mopped or steam-mopped; a near-dry mop spot-cleans them.
- Heavy furniture. On these floating floors, the care guides set the weight at which heavy pieces can restrict the floor's movement: 450kg for Pantora and the Deluxe, Contemporary Plus and Luxury Editions, and 800kg for the Legend Collection.
Reading it on a specification
AC answers one question: how the surface wears. Read it alongside format, slip, fire, cleaning and the installation, and choose the floor for the room. The ranges are in Pantora and Core, and the test reports and care guides are on Downloads.
