With all of the flooring options available to consumers today, it can be difficult to choose the best option for your home. Hardwood flooring is a wonderful addition to any home that will not only increase its value but also give it a classic, sophisticated beauty.
There are a plethora of hardwood flooring options available, from easy click-type flooring to solid hardwood. By exploring the options available, you can decide which flooring option is best suited to your home project.
Contact the experts at Atlas Wood Floors Inc for answers to your questions and to help you select the best wood floor option for your home or business.
FREE WOOD FLOOR INSTALLATION OR REFINISH ESTIMATE
Prefinished engineered wood floors
One common type of hardwood flooring is known as prefinished engineered. When compared with solid hardwood, engineered products tend to experience minimal expansion and contraction, making them more stable. This is the best option for any rooms that are below-grade, such as a basement.
Prefinished engineered flooring is constructed in ply fashion and has a hardwood veneer on the surface. This veneer is referred to as the wear layer. There are varying thicknesses of wear layers, so it's important to know what you are purchasing. A thicker wear layer can be refinished, while a thinner layer will not offer this opportunity. Prefinished engineered flooring can be stapled, glued or nailed down, and some types can even be floated.
Bamboo wood flooring
Bamboo flooring is a relatively new entrant to the hardwood flooring market. Hardwood flooring has always been a popular option because of its clean, classic look. Bamboo flooring offers a unique alternative that may be the ideal choice for your lifestyle. Either option can give a home an exciting new look and feel. One of bamboo's most popular benefits is that it is eco-friendly. Bamboo can grow as much as 3 feet in a single day, making it an excellent renewable resource.
Solid hardwood products are the alternative to prefinished engineered flooring. This type of flooring should be installed only on-grade or above-grade, which means that it should not be used in a basement. Solid hardwood flooring can be nailed or glued down.
3 Solid Wood Floor Options
There are three options for solid wood flooring.
Strip Wood Flooring
Strip flooring is a type of wood flooring that is generally milled from lumber that is cut from less desirable parts of the tree, such as large limbs and the upper portion of the trunk. Because these pieces of wood contain less heartwood (the durable core of the trunk), strip flooring is often cut into shorter lengths (approximately 12-84 inches depending on the manufacturer) and narrower widths, typically no more than 3 or 4 inches wide. Hardwood strip flooring is commonly found in two primary thicknesses: half and three-quarters of an inch.
Plank Wood Flooring
Once a popular choice for farmhouses, wide plank flooring has seen a renaissance over the past few years, appearing in new home construction and remodeling projects everywhere. Many homeowners are discovering wood plank flooring offers the rustic feel they want for their homes.
Parquet Flooring
Parquet Floors is an astonishing contrast to the ordinary hardwood floor. Hardwood parquet is available in many modern patterns as well as classic European styles.
Parquet wood tiles are intended for glue-down installation over wood or concrete subfloors. Available in standard 3/4", 3/8" or custom thickness from a variety of wood species. Solid wood (no veneers) construction. If you need a custom pattern - we can make it for you.
One obvious factor to consider when selecting a hardwood flooring is the wood species. There are too many available species to cover them all, so you should browse a variety of species at a reputable store before selecting one. However, there are a few popular choices to give first consideration to.
Red Oak Wood Flooring
is America's most popular choice for wood floors and serves as the industry benchmark when rating hardness among species. It features a reddish tan color and has a distinctive glow that creates an inviting atmosphere in rooms near and far. Better yet, changes due to sunlight exposure are minimal with Red Oak, ensuring a bright and beautiful floor for years to come.This product is proudly finished in the USA.
Yellow pine wood flooring
is yellow-brown in color, and can either be clear with a finer grain or contain whorls and knots. It has a lighter color, but the grain pattern tends to be dark. As a solid hardwood, this yellow pine flooring consists of a single piece of wood constructed entirely from the same species. A protective coating and stain have not been applied to this product, so it must be finished on site.