Choosing to install hardwood flooring into your home or office is a great decision. Hardwood flooring is an investment compared to the other flooring materials. It is a bit more expensive, but if it’s taken care of it’ll last for decades and add value to the property. This depends on the type of the hardwood flooring used, of course, and there are so many types to choose from.
How to Differentiate Hardwood Flooring
What Species of Tree?
One of the main decisions homeowners are faced with is which species of tree they want to use to make their hardwood floors. The best hardwood floors are made from strong, hardy, and readily available trees such as oak, cherry, and maple. Soft hardwood floors, such as pine, are also a great option for floors in your home, as the lighter color and softer feel can be used to create a specific atmosphere. If you’re looking for an eco-friendly option, bamboo flooring is very renewable, since the bamboo plant grows incredibly quickly. With bamboo flooring, you don’t have to worry about losing the natural feel that you’d get with other eco-friendly options, like cork flooring. Other, more exotic species of wood are commonly used as well, including teak and tigerwood, but these are on the upper end of the price spectrum.
Solid or Engineered Flooring?
Hardwood flooring mainly falls into two categories: solid hardwood flooring, which is a solid plank of whatever species you desire, and engineered flooring, which is a thinner top-layer of the species of your choice, glued to multiple levels of other, lesser-quality wood. It actually is more stable than solid hardwood flooring, but there are drawbacks. For one thing, you won’t be able to resurface the floor more than a couple of times at the absolute max. This is something you’ll be able to do repeatedly with solid hardwood flooring, which is part of the reason it has such a long lifespan. Similarly, engineered flooring won’t stand up to the pressures of moisture and water nearly as well as solid flooring. Engineered flooring is the more cost-effective option, however.
New or Reclaimed Hardwood Flooring
Another thing to consider is whether you purchase new hardwood flooring, or reclaimed hardwood flooring. Reclaimed flooring is cheaper, because it’s been in someone else’s home, but it’s still good wood. It’s also environmentally-friendly as it saves other trees from being cut down to make new wood. Reclaimed wood may have more dings and dents than you’d find with new hardwood flooring, but that’s part of the charm. It has history and legacy that you don’t find in new wood. It’s just the thing to place in a new Nashville home to give it a sense of familiarity. Reclaimed wood flooring isn’t brittle either, as there are many stories of contractors finding pieces in old barns and homes from previous decades, and repurposing them for years to come.
Hardwood flooring is a worthy investment, regardless of whether you plan on installing brand new oak hardwood flooring, an engineered wood floor, or reclaim it from something else and make it your own. Just be sure to contact the professionals at Ozburn-Hessey when you’re ready, so they can help you pick out the floor of your dreams!
