There is something about a wood floor that enhances a room. It gives a room a sense of warmth, permanence and stability. Even in a small house with minimal square footage, wood floors give a house a well-crafted, “high-end” appearance. In fact, 90 percent of realtors say that wood floors help a home sell faster and for more money.

Is Wood Flooring Right For You?

There are many excellent reasons why wood flooring may be right for your home. There are also a few reasons why wood flooring might not be the right choice for you. The best way to know is to take the time to educate yourself about the benefits and limitations of wood before you make the investment.

Good Reasons to Choose Wood Floor:

1. Adaptability - Wood floors look good with every decor. The wide range of species, colors and patterns means you can find wood flooring to fit in with virtually any decor, era, type of furniture, artwork or overall style. Wood floors complement, and never compete for attention. They are an excellent way of tying your rooms together.
2. Low maintenance – Wood floors are easy to clean, just dust or damp mop. They’re perfect for people with allergies, asthma or other respiratory problems, because dust particles, pollen and dust mites stay on the surface where they can be wiped away easily and completely.
3. Durability – Wood floors are long-lasting. Carpets need replacing every ten years or so, while a well-maintained hardwood floor can easily outlive a 30-year mortgage. Plus, carpets break down as they age, creating more particles and pollutants to deal with, whereas wood floors hold firm. New finishes have made wood floors even more durable.
4. Economical – Hardwood floors cost about the same as a high-quality carpet installation, but last two to three times as long.

In the next article, we’ll take a look at why a wood floor might not be the best choice for you. There are factors of sub-flooring, humidity and wide temperature fluctuations to consider. Stay tuned for Part 2.

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The Two Main Types of Wood Flooring

The simple term, “Wood flooring” refers to any product manufactured from timber that is designed for use as flooring, either structural or aesthetic. Even bamboo flooring is often considered a wood floor, although it is not manufactured from timber, but a grass.

Solid Wood

Solid hardwood floors come in a wide range of dimensions and styles, with each plank made of solid wood and milled from a single piece of timber. Solid hardwood floors were originally used for structural purposes, being installed perpendicular to the wooden support beams of a building. Modern construction techniques now rarely use wood building frames and solid hardwood floors are used almost exclusively for their appearance.

For flooring, solid wood has many limitations due to the natural characteristics of wood. Expansion and contraction of wood from moisture and temperature fluctuation puts many dimensional restrictions on solid wood floors. Typically, 5″ wide and 3/4″ thick boards are the largest that can be manufactured from solid wood without compromising the structure of the flooring (some manufacturers produce wider boards using proprietary milling techniques). There is, however, no standard size which will perform well in every environment. For contemporary construction techniques, the most significant characteristic of solid wood floors is that they are not recommended to be installed directly over concrete.

Engineered Wood Flooring

Engineered wood flooring is comprised of two or more layers of wood in the form of a plank. The top layer (lamella) is the wood that is visible when the flooring is installed, and is adhered to the core (or sub-strait) which provides the stability.

Laminate, vinyl and veneer floors are often confused with engineered wood floors – laminate uses an image of wood on its surface, vinyl is plastic formed to look like wood, and veneer uses a thin layer of wood with a core that could be one of a number of different composite wood products (most commonly, high density fibreboard).

There are two different approaches to engineered wood flooring manufacturing:

1) Wood ply construction (”sandwich core”): Uses multiple thin plies of wood adhered together. The wood grain of each ply runs perpendicular to the ply below it. Stability is attained from using thin layers of wood that have little to no reaction to climatic change. The wood is further stabilized due to equal pressure being exerted lengthwise and widthwise from the plies running perpendicular to each other.

2) Finger core construction: Finger core engineered wood floors are made of small pieces of milled timber that run perpendicular to the top layer (lamella) of wood. They can be 2-ply or 3-ply, depending on their intended use. If it is three ply, the third ply is often plywood that runs parallel to the lamella. Stability is gained through the grains running perpendicular to each other, and the expansion and contraction of wood is reduced and relegated to the middle ply, stopping the floor from gapping or cupping.

Engineered wood is the most common type of wood flooring used globally, probably due to it’s durability and economy. North America is the only continent that has a larger solid wood market than engineered, although engineered wood is quickly catching up in market share.

In the next article, we’ll compare Solid Wood with Engineered Wood.

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Should You Consider Bamboo Flooring?

If you’re new to bamboo flooring, you may be wondering if this type of flooring would be a good choice for you. After all, it originates in China, and we know about their record…

Relax, the truth is, bamboo flooring is highly durable, economical and beautiful, and as good a choice, or better, than most wood flooring material.

Here Are Some Of The Advantages Of Bamboo Flooring:

• Attractiveness - The nodes of the bamboo are tighter and darker than the rest of the grain, creating appealing natural-looking patterns.
• Hardness and durability – Bamboo is harder and stronger than many hardwoods. It is also resilient and resists denting, although, like any other wood floor it will scratch if scraped with something sharp.
• Insect resistance – Insects, such as termites, prefer softer woods.
• Moisture resistance - Bamboo has a higher resistant to moisture than most wood flooring, so you don’t need to worry about spills ruining your floor. This makes bamboo flooring an excellent choice for kitchens and bathrooms.
• Easy to clean - All it takes to keep bamboo floors clean is a daily sweeping and a weekly damp mopping.
• Eco-Friendly – Unlike hardwood, bamboo is quickly replenished and highly renewable. Technically, the bamboo plant is a grass and grows accordingly. It reaches maturity in considerably less time than the trees used to make wood floors. The United States Green Building Council’s LEED program allows points for the use of bamboo floors by virtue of it being a rapidly renewable resource.

How is Bamboo Flooring Made?

In Southeast Asia, bamboo is used in a more natural form. For North American markets, bamboo flooring is processed so it can be used in the same way other hardwoods are used. The bamboo is split, flattened, dried, and then laminated in layers with glue under high pressure. Manufactured bamboo floors are typically made available in planks with either vertical- or horizontal-grain orientation.

Vertical or Horizontal?

Bamboo flooring may also be classified as Vertical and Horizontal. In vertical bamboo floors, a vertical plank will have each of the component pieces stood vertically on their narrowest edge and then press laminated side to side. The effect is a lined, almost uniform look to the surface of the finished floor plank.

Horizontal bamboo floors have individual slats that are arranged in a horizontal direction, on their widest edge, and then joined side by side with adjacent pieces using a high-pressure laminate system. The look of the finished horizontal surface is one where the characteristic nodes of the bamboo are randomly visible.

Locking bamboo flooring is the easiest to install. Individual flooring planks have interlocking joints that click precisely into place.

Colors

The two major colors are natural (similar to beech) and carbonized (similar to oak). The process of steaming bamboo material under a controlled pressure and temperature is called carbonization. In this process, bio-organisms and sugar breaks down, and the color of the material changes into brownish. The carbonization process typically softens the bamboo by 10-20%.

The natural and carbonized bamboo floors are typically referred to as solid bamboo, although in fact the structures are layered, similar to a plywood. By combining plank alignment and color, many variations in styles and colors can be produced.

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