What type of wood floors are best

Durable, natural, and renewable, hardwood flooring is available in a variety of colors and grain patterns to suit your individual design and lifestyle needs. Five hardwood species oak, walnut, hickory, maple, and cherry are among the most common choices for residential flooring and each has its own properties. But before you select a species, you should understand the pros and cons of both types of hardwood flooring—solid and engineered—and consider finishing options, too.

Traditional hardwood floors feature solid wood boards while engineered hardwood flooring offers the look of the real thing with increased application options at a slightly lower cost. Solid hardwood flooring boards are milled from a single piece of wood, while engineered hardwood boards feature a multi-layer base topped with a layer of real hardwood. Price aside, consider the benefits and drawbacks of both. Herringbone Flooring. Oak Flooring. Shop Solid Wood Flooring.

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Why Choose Us. Installation Advice. Walnut is a soft, lightweight hardwood but is still durable. Walnut hardwood flooring does well in living or dining rooms as it creates a stunning, bright, and luxurious interior. Interiors that have hickory hardwood tend to have a cozy, rustic ambiance. Hickory flooring is good for any type of home and is an excellent choice for families and homeowners with indoor pets. Maple hardwood flooring is one of the lighter-toned hardwoods and is characterized by its unique grain pattern.

It is one of the hardest types of hardwood flooring and is extremely durable. Maple hardwood is also one of the most affordable types of hardwood and is an excellent choice for homeowners with pets and kids. This can often be the most difficult decision you have to make. Installing hardwood floors that are already sanded, sealed, and finished at the factory is going to reduce the time spent on installation.

This allows for the application of a custom stain before the final finish is applied. This can be helpful in situations where you are seeking to match the color of certain pieces of furniture or an existing floor in your home. Because this type of flooring is stained and finished after installation, it also aids in aiding in its resistance to moisture. Despite also being called black cherry, American cherry wood often sports more of a reddish-brown hue.

And people love it. Jatoba looks vaguely similar to mahogany, but it has more of a natural luster than many other types of hardwood.

Birch is a lighter wood and comes in both domestic and imported options—neither of which are overly expensive. For comparison, low-end options cost about the same as oak floors, but high-end birch can be bought for about half the price of high-end oak. Birch is also fairly storied, as its bark was used as notepaper by Ancient Romans.

Merbau actually goes by a few different names, like kwila and ipil —probably because it can be found all over the world, from Australia to Southeast Asia—and even East Africa. This can make it appealing because these features generally tend to be restricted to more expensive exotic options. This may lead to a price bump in the near future. This hardwood species is moderately durable, but its best feature is its great resistance to humidity.

Mesquite can be a little pricey for a domestic choice, though. Knots are common in the wood, so only a small portion of the lumber can be used for flooring as they can present structural vulnerabilities. However, these knots also give mesquite floors a ton of personality.

In terms of appearance, mesquite usually has reddish-brown colors and a wavy grain. And as with other pricey options, you can also find mesquite-look patterns in wood floor alternatives like non-toxic laminate flooring. Beech is another hardwood species with both domestic and imported options. Beech has a rather plain natural appearance, but its willingness to accept stains makes that an advantage.

Naturally, this makes it a good option for engineered wood flooring too. You might be more likely to beech wood in a brewery, though—beech is often used in the beer-making process because of its non-reactive properties. Padauk is an African import known equally for pest resistance and for being mispronounced pah-DUKE, if you please. Padauk is sometimes referred to as vermillion and has a vaguely similar appearance to mesquite—though with a much wavier grain.

However, this rather unique color will mature into the aforementioned red-brown color when exposed to too much UV light. Translation: you might not want to use it as sunroom flooring. Sapele is usually used as an admittedly expensive imported substitute for mahogany because its appearance is eerily similar. However, sapele is also significantly stronger, making it a more appropriate flooring choice for those with a lot of foot traffic in their homes—or a propensity to drop things guilty.

Unfortunately, the hefty price for sapele is only likely to rise—as many of its ranges are threatened by deforestation and logging. Brazilian teak is among the most durable wood flooring choices in the world. And yet, a decent supply has actually kept its price relatively modest. Like Brazilian walnut, Brazilian teak is frequently used by many of the best engineered wood flooring brands because of its strength.

However, it can be pretty difficult to work with and has an unusual resistance to adhesives and stains because of its natural oils. And the only market this hardwood species seems to be a part of is the flooring market.

Kempas tends to be sold as a cheaper exotic import that takes stain and finishes quite well. So long as it has a good foundation, kempas is actually quite strong though! However, the benefit here is that kempas can act like a blank slate for virtually any wood floor colors you desire.

Not to be confused with the golfer, tigerwood has the rare distinction of having a Janka score over without sacrificing workability. Because of its durability, even in thin slices, this hardwood species is a great choice for engineered wood manufacturers—and an equally great choice for homeowners because of its moderate price.