Wood floors are a classic addition to any home. With harm from fire or flood, a well-made and correctly-installed good wood floor will add warmth, character and value to your interior as long as you are in your property.
However, not all of wood flooring are equivalent, and the many species of timber that get made into flooring have different characteristics. Knowing these characteristics will go a very long way to assist you pick the wood floor right for you.
Engineered hardwood flooring and solid wood flooring are extremely different things, and there are distinct conditions when you would work better than another. A future installment of the series will discuss engineered wood flooring, but let us get through solid wood .
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Armstrong
Oak plank floor – $11
Oak. The most common wood floor employed in North America is walnut, especially walnut. Red oak is the name of this tree, not the colour of the timber. What ever the reason behind the name, a red bamboo flooring is a surface that can hold up to wear and use. Because of its hardness, red oak resists scratches, an important factor if you are not planning to use area rugs.
Floors – $15
Red walnut retains wood stains evenly and comes from a wide variety of stain colors. It may be dark or light, but its own distinctive grain pattern is virtually always obvious. If you don’t like powerful grain designs, oak isn’t the floor for you.
Depending on the manufacturer, many plank flooring are available in a bare state so that they may be finished onsite. Factory finishes tend to be more consistent and more resilient, but you are going to have more finish options in case you’ve got your flooring finished onsite. Neither alternative is automatically better or worse; it depends upon the job available. Know however, that mill finishes tend to cost significantly less, and matching them in a later period is a whole lot less trouble.
Brooke Marks, Symmetry Home Staging and Design
The quality and consistency of the grain pattern is just one of those characteristics that drives the purchase price of an oak floor. The more consistent the grain, the costlier the floor will be.
Oak pros: Highly resistant to dents and deep scratches
Disadvantages: includes a grain pattern that may be too focus grabbing for a few
Cost: $8-$20 per square foot
Suggested uses: Living areas, hallways, entryways and kitchens
Hanrahan Meyers Architects
Ash. A similar timber to walnut that is even tougher is ash. Baseball bats and garden tool handles are usually made from ash, simply to give you a feeling of how tough it is.
The sapwood of an ash tree is cream-colored to nearly white, and its heartwood is tan to dark brown. The grain pattern in every form is obviously apparent, though not as pronounced as it’s in walnut.
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
Ash solid plank floor
Ash retains stain colors nicely, and since light-colored ash flooring made from ash sapwood are more desired, most ash flooring are normally lightly stained. A light shade and a consistent grain pattern drive the cost of the type of floor. And as is the case with all woods, it is available in many different grades.
Ash pros: This can be a very hard, hardwood floor
Disadvantages: Can be too light for some; tends to cost more than walnut
Cost: $10-$20 per square foot
Suggested uses: Living areas, hallways, entryways, baths and kitchens
Alix Bragg Interior Design
Pine. On the other side of the hardness scale sits pine, which is not a hardwood in any way. Pine is a soft wood, although its hardness varies wildly with the species of pine utilized. If you are purchasing a pine floor, be sure to find out what kind of pine it’s.
Pine is a character timber. It has pin knots and holes and it is popular for that reason. It’s difficult to keep it looking pristine, which only adds to its character.
Conventional Floors – $15
The heartwood of a pine tree yields the darkest and hardest wood the tree offers, and heart-pine flooring are created from this heartwood entirely. A heart-pine floor will withstand dents and deep scratches greater than a pine floor created from sapwood.
Heart-pine flooring have a natural, reddish-gold tone . Many heart-pine flooring are not stained, they’re just treated with a clear topcoat. They don’t change in reaction to humidity levels and also have a inclination to persist for a lengthy time. With age, heart pine develops a patina such as the one on this antique floor.
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors
Eastern white pine
There is a place for other pine floors. too. This photo shows a Eastern white-pine floor using a dark stain on it. Additionally, it is considerably wider than a heart-pine plank can be. Other varieties of pine hold stain colors exceptionally well and nearly always cost less than heart-pine flooring.
LKM Design
Historically, pine has been an economical flooring material, and the world is filled with older factories and barns with pine floors. These antique, reclaimed pine flooring are plentiful, available to be used in homes and not as pricey as you may think.
Pine pros: The original character floor
Disadvantages: Tends to become comparatively soft when compared to other woods, tends to dent under heavy furniture.
Cost: $5-$20 per square foot
Suggested uses: Living areas, hallways, entryways and kitchens
usfloorsllc.com
Strong bamboo – $6.
Bamboo. Bamboo floors have been available around the world for about the last 20 years. In those 20 years, they have come to be so widely adopted their use is no more unique.
Bamboo floors are produced by spraying individual strands of bamboo in a binder and then pressing everything together under high pressure. The consequent plank is for all intents and purposes a good piece of bamboo each bit as tough as oak.
Bamboo has been stained in lighter stains to allow its freshwater grain pattern to reveal.
Mark English Architects, AIA
Bamboo is a very stable material and it’ll last as long and wear in addition to any wood floor.
It lends itself well to contemporary environment, mostly because it is a contemporary material.
usfloorsllc.com
Strong bamboo – $6.
In recent years, bamboo flooring producers have been taking some liberties with the bamboo we have come to understand. In the floor shown this bamboo plank was stained dark and hands scraped, a treatment that used to be earmarked for timber flooring exclusively.
Some of those bamboo flooring are not instantly recognizable as bamboo at all and may be utilized as stand-ins for less-sturdy woods in areas such as baths.
As a fabricated product, bamboo flooring are constantly factory finished. The caliber of the topcoat and the binders are what push its cost. Cheap bamboo flooring can scratch easily; the combination of a cheap bamboo floor and a huge puppy is a recipe for a ruined floor.
Bamboo pros: Sustainable and durable
Disadvantages: Lends a contemporary air that may not be intentional
Cost: $8-$15 per square foot
Suggested uses: Living areas, hallways, entryways, bath and kitchens
Melaragno Design Company, LLC
Maple. In case you’re searching for a tough, light-colored floor, think about walnut. It’s a close-grain hardwood, meaning its grain pattern is somewhat more subtle than many different woods could be.
Maple is very tough and dent-resistant, and because of naturally light wood, it has a tendency to show up as a light floor. There is another reason for those light endings, nevertheless.
Harrell Remodeling, Inc..
Maple is a practically non-porous wood and it can’t absorb dark stains quite easily. Dark-stained walnut tends to appear blotchy — it is a feature of the timber, not the stain.
All woods change colour with time, and walnut tends to grow more yellowish with age. That is another characteristic to be conscious of.
The clearer the walnut, the more expensive it tends to be. Natural defects such as mineral streaks and pin knots have a tendency to reduce the quality and the cost of a maple floor.
Maple pros: Difficult and dent resistent
Disadvantages: Doesn’t hold black stains nicely
Cost: $7-$16 per square foot
Suggested uses: Living areas, hallways, entryways and kitchens
More:
A Introduction to Sound Plank Wood Floors
When to Use Engineered Wood Floors
Laminate Floors: Get the Look of Wood (and much more ) for Less
Zebra, Tiger and Teak Wood, Oh, My!
5 Complex Wood Floors
20 Great Cases of Transitions in Floors
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