Flooring SetsThe Mood At Home
Interior designers and builders agree that the first element to consider when beginning to finish a room is flooring, because it sets the mood.
More and more professionals these days are choosing wood flooring over tile and carpeting. There are so many options to choose from: solid hardwood, engineered wood, and reclaimed antique wood all available in a variety of styles. But making the right choice for your tastes and circumstances is not as hard as it appears. Following are some important factors to consider when making your decision, as well as some helpful advice from the experts.
Which Wood-Flooring Type Should You Choose?
Solid Hardwood: This wood expands and contracts and sometimes creaks, but its natural beauty add value to your home. That value will endure, because it can be re-sanded and refinished.
Engineered Wood Floors: These floors are constructed of thin sheets of wood glued together and finished at the factory. The resulting product resists buckling and warping, make it more staple than solid wood. Although engineered wood floors were developed to be glued over concrete, they can also be nailed or floated, unlike solid wood, which can only be nailed to a subfloor.
Reclaimed Antique Wood: This is a custom made flooring option tailor-made one plank at a time according to the customer’s specifications. It can cut from the center section of a beam, which makes this flooring option very stable.
Finished vs. Unfinished
One of the benefits of solid hardwood flooring is that it’s available finished or unfinished. This is really helpful if you’re trying to match an adjacent floor. Then you can go with an unfinished option and stain it to blend. You will be pleased with the uniform color and finish you can achieve in your floor by finishing it on site. But do take into account that an unfinished wood floor will probably take several days to install, stain, and finish.
One of the benefits of finished wood, whether solid or engineered, is that it’s factory sanded, stained, and finished, so it’s much easier and quicker to install. You also avoid the mess of sanding and finishing on site. Finished wood is durable and is therefore a great option for high-traffic areas. And don’t forget that it’s less expensive than unfinished wood.
Important Things to Consider
If you have radiant heating in your home, where the heat source is under the floor, then engineered would be the better option over solid hardwood because of its durability. Durability is also a central factor in the National Wood Flooring Association’s recommendation of quarter-sawn or rift-sawn wood in this circumstance. According to the NWFA, since narrow boards fare better than wide ones when there are changes in temperature and humidity, with this type of heating, strip flooring is preferable over plank flooring.
For those homeowners who live at the beach, Stoddard again recommends an engineered wood, because it’s scratch-resistant and therefore less likely to be damaged by sand tracked in from the beach, and it also requires less maintenance. For any interior that’s not environmentally controlled—such as a cottage or summer home or below-grade installation—engineered hardwood flooring remains the best option.
Some Simple Design Tips
As you begin to personalize a room, it’s important to pay attention to the understated detail. A great look is to use a lighter wood overall and then either add a dark border or drop in a maple medallion that looks like an area run.
Mixing woods from room to room is becoming more common. Choose darker woods, like walnut or cherry, for a den or a bedroom. Kitchens, on the other hand, need lighter, brighter woods such as maple or birch.
For formal, traditional, or historic homes, darker wood works best. But if your home is country, casual, or contemporary, a lighter wood might work well. Be sure to choose flooring that will complement all your fabrics, furnishings, and accessories.
Current Trends in Wood Flooring
If you’re looking for the latest trend in flooring, consider hand-scraped wood or an “exotic” wood from a far-off land. For delightful grains and colors, look at options such as Brazilian cherry, Santos mahogany, and Amendoim. Conveniently, all are available in solid hardwood or engineered wood.
The old look and simplicity of woods such as Old Groove Eastern White Pine is becoming increasingly popular among owners of historic homes on the Eastern seaboards. For owners of historic homes on the Eastern seaboard, woods such as Old Groove Eastern White Pine are prized for their old look and simplicity. Walnut has fast grown in popularity as dark woods become more and more “in.”
DIY & Maintaining Your Wood Floor
Almost 30 percent of homeowners install wood flooring themselves. If you can operate a nail gun and a saw, then you can do it. There are also many resources to help you available online and at your local bookstore.
Once your floor is installed, you’ll be pleased to discover that wood flooring is extremely low maintenance. A regular schedule of sweeping and vacuuming is all you really need, a chore that will be made much easier if you keep a step-off mat at every doorway to collect any incoming dirt. Remember to never leave standing water on a wood floor. It’s a good idea to keep an extra box of wood in case you need to replace a strip.
Natural hardwoods will survive a household accident much better than laminates and synthetics, since their grain and pattern go all the way through. Even those scuffs and burns that would become permanent in a synthetic floor can be repaired with relative ease.
Avo Barsoumian has been in the flooring and interior decorating industry for over 25 years. He is the owner of Carpet Wagon, a family owned flooring company in Los Angeles. They have a huge selection of elegant hardwood flooring, beautiful laminate flooring and plush carpeting. It doesn’t matter whether your searching for carpet remnant for your new apartment or cost of carpeting to update your older house then Carpet Wagon has exactly what you’re looking for.