What's In a Wood Floor?

I get a lot of questions about wood floors.  People are really unsure about what type, species and style to choose.  Honestly there are a lot of options out there and it can be confusing.  Everyone seems to have a preconceived notion about wood floors. 

Scratch

Hard to clean

Easy to clean

Soft

Show dirt

Hard to install

Easy to install

Beautiful

A lot of maintenance

Low maintenance

You get my point. 

But what do we really like about wood floors?  The LOOK!!  the aesthetic…They look pretty, they look rich and they have been in style FOREVER (except bamboo, yikes sorry that’s O-U-T).  Otherwise, light, dark, knotted, smooth, gray, white you name it; almost every kind of wood flooring is fashionable now.

I’m going to try to decode the basics of choosing a wood floor (everyone’s situation will be different, so as always I would recommend consulting a design professional.)  I’m just touching on the type of wood floor.  I’ll talk about style or species of woods in another post.

Before I get into which type of wood floor I want to touch upon laminate wood flooring.

I hate it.

Laminate flooring is a sub layer of compressed fiberboard with a photographic image of wood grain over the fiberboard.  So it’s a photo of wood.  Laminate photos are getting better and better, but still come on people!  They never look completely real, they usually don’t wear well, and they aren't always cheaper!!!  Unless you are looking for a really temporary floor, like a kid’s playroom or have another special circumstance, I don’t recommend laminate flooring.

Choose your own wood floor adventure...

Two more things to note:

1.  Engineered wood floors can be nailed down or glued down.
2. Solid wood floors must be nailed down.  So that means you must have something to nail into.  If you don’t have a wood subfloor, you can’t nail into it. (this is a general rule, as with most rules there are a few exceptions)

I usually recommend engineered 90% of the time.  In a later post I’ll talk about the style or species of wood and all the cool trends in wood flooring.

Do you have wood floors?  What do you think of them?