Choosing The Right Hardwood Floors For Your Home
Do you love the feel of natural wood on floors? If yes, here's how to choose the right hardwood floor for your home.
Do you love the feel of natural wood on floors?
If yes, here's how to
choose the right hardwood floor for your home.
This information comes from working closely with customers in and around Egypt and the Middle East, Connecticut, and answering their questions about what's available and what's best for them. Although the choices can get overwhelming, your first consideration when selecting a new hardwood floor should be the style and colour which determines how your room will look and how it will make you feel.
Here are several points you have to decide for each:
The whole design
What you really need to feel out from your floor, and what the style matching your home and your personality, there are a wide variety of designs at the wood court showroom to choose from, however, we can do a special one for you, or implement your custom design
Here are examples of some designs you may like:
The wood plank or tile dimension
Today you have a vast array of choices from traditional 5cm width strips up to 20
cm width plank floors. For years the 5cm width strip has been the popular choice
for builders for new home construction. The reason being it is readily available
and cost-effective
Also, you can choose from 30cm long up to 180 cm planks
You may love the random width, random length or both
Wood Hardness
This shouldn't come as a surprise, but hardwood comes in different levels of
hardness. The hardest woods are Teak, Pecan, Hard Maple and White
Oak.
Hardwoods include White Ash, Beech, Red Oak, Yellow Birch, Green Ash and
Black Walnut, Cherry, Mahogany
The least hardwood or we can call the softwood are different types of
Pine.
Depending on the level of traffic and activity in your home - including kids and
pets - you may be more interested in how hard a floor you select.
Two Types Of Wood Floors To Choose From
Although we're discussing hardwood flooring, thanks to ongoing product development you'll find that hardwood comes in two categories: solid and engineered hardwood. Let's explore.
Solid Hardwood
Solid wood flooring is made from one continuous piece of wood and is available in
strips, and planks.
Generally, a solid hardwood floor is 17mm up to 21mm thick plank. However, it
can be manufactured in a variety of widths and thicknesses.
Solid hardwood floors are generally for nail-down installation or glue down,
floating technique is not recommended at all for solid wood flooring.
The benefit of selecting solid hardwood floors is that you can customize them in
terms of wood species, stain colour as well as finishes. From a finish
perspective, you can opt for unfinished or prefinished:
- Unfinished flooring offers unlimited colour stain options.
- Prefinished wood flooring features a factory applied finish with more staining colours availability.
Because solid wood is sensitive to moisture, you don't want to install it below ground level or directly over a concrete slab unless you have excellent isolating materials
Pre-Finished vs. Site Finished Hardwood: Which is Better?
Solid vs. Engineered Hardwood: Which is Better?
Installation techniques
Engineered Hardwood
Engineered wood flooring is made from layers of wood stacked and glued together
under heat and pressure. Usually, there are three to seven layers (plies)
stacked with grains running perpendicular to each other. The top finish layer
can be cut from a variety of domestic or exotic hardwood species and is
generally factory prefinished with polyurethane or an aluminium oxide finish for
hardness.
Engineered floors range from 12mm to 20mm in thickness and from 6cm to 20cm in
width. Installation can be glued, floated, nailed or stapled.
All woods expand and contract with heat and humidity. However, engineered wood
is more dimensionally stable than solid hardwood because the layers keep the
movement in balance. As a result, it is less inclined to swell and shrink and
can be installed in areas where solid wood can't such as over concrete or in
high moisture areas such as kitchens, powder rooms and utility rooms, also it is
the first choice when an underfloor heating system exists.
Exotic Hardwood
You may also hear the term 'exotic hardwood' used. This refers to hardwood
species from around the world. Exotic hardwood species come from Australia,
Africa, South American and the Far East.
Exotic hardwoods offer unique wood graining and colour variations. They are
known for their hardness and unique patterns. Most exotic woods are available in
engineered wood construction, although some are available in solid hardwood
planks as well. Sapeli, ebony and Jatoba are examples of exotic hardwood.
Wood Stain and Finishing Techniques
Other factors that affect your hardwood floor look include stains and finishing techniques such as hand-scraping or brushing that adds a slight texture to the wood.
Hand-scraping or brushing
Hardwood that has either hand-scraping or brushing is an excellent choice for
active families with children and pets. These types of floors are usually found
in planks 7cm and wider with the most popular being 11cm to 13cm see the wood
court hand-scrapped collection available in the most popular species such as
oak, teak, maple, walnut, and cherry.
Below you see a hand-scraped or antiqued engineered wood floor by the wood court
Wood stains
As for stains, browns and greys have been more popular in recent years, especially the greys being a favourite in all modern homes we love now in Egypt. You'll also find dark stains (explore the wood court colour collection)
Natural oil vs. polyurethane finish
Many of our customers like European Oak floors which often have a natural oil
finish instead of the traditional polyurethane finish.
While a polyurethane finish simply sits on top of your hardwood floor forming a
film to protect the hardwood, a natural oil finish penetrates the wood and
strengthens the wood fibres while enhancing the look of the floor since there is
no film covering the wood. All wood floors will dent and scratch over time but
with a natural oil finished floor there is no need for the mess and
inconvenience of sanding and finishing as all that is needed is to reapply a new
coat of oil in the affected areas.