Many consumers are under the impact that solid wood flooring is superior to engineered hardwood floor coverings and may perhaps usually consider built flooring for their own home. Having spent 25 years being a flooring contractor plus the past 4 decades as a store of both built and solid wood flooring, I possess found that there are lots of myths about both varieties of floors. I would really prefer to share typically the following information and even my experience consequently that you could make an informed decision about the best floor with regard to your project.

Before I begin my comparison of built and solid flooring, let us initially clean up the false impression that engineered floor is the similar as laminate floor coverings (ie-Pergo. ) Additional than a several people enter the showroom using this idea, which is certainly not true. Laminate floor coverings is not true wood, engineered floors is. The area layer of layered floors are a photograph of wood wheat on paper impregnated with melamine, not really real wood. The very best layer (also called wear layer) associated with engineered wood floor consists of (real! ) high-quality real wood. Engineered hardwood flooring surfaces are comprised associated with multiple layers regarding wood, that happen to be cross-banded for stability and even glued onto some sort of plywood base.


Reliable Flooring: Pro's

Stable wood floor is precisely that--a solid piece of wood from top to bottom. Typically the thickness can fluctuate, typically ranges through 3/4" to 5/16". Solid hardwood is certainly hardwearing in addition to resilient, as well as key advantage is it can be re-sanded several times. However, it will be not necessarily superior to engineered flooring in this value. Solid wood floor coverings, like engineered floor, has a "wear layer" or layer of wood that will can be sanded, and it is usually only a fraction of the width of the flooring. Even though reliable floors are thicker than the wear part of engineered floor surfaces, you can only crushed stone down so considerably before you might hit a toe nail with solid floors. You may find one, possibly 2, additional sandings together with a solid flooring compared to a great engineered floor. This is the just possible advantage to be able to solid flooring, in my opinion, and it will not apply inside of every case and usually does not outweigh some great benefits of engineered floor.

Engineered Flooring: Plus

Engineered floors need several advantages. While solid floors are not a great choice throughout situations where presently there are high wetness levels or bright heat systems, the construction of built floors makes them stable enough in order to withstand certain modifications in temperature and even moisture that may possibly produce a solid floor warp. Engineered wood flooring is designed in order to resist wood's all-natural tendency to improve dimensionally over time. Typically the grain of every single layer runs inside opposite directions, which usually makes engineered floors very stable. Because of this the wood may expand and deal less than stable wood flooring during fluctuations in humidity and temperature. Intended for this reason engineered floors are some sort of better choice intended for applications for instance over radiant heat installation, in kitchens, bathrooms, and basements, or perhaps where a floors is needed to span two different sub-floors like plywood and concrete.

One other advantage of built floors is more flexibility of unit installation types. Whereas solid floors can just be nailed down, most engineered floors can be pinned or stapled to a wood sub floor, or glued down to a wood sub floor or perhaps concrete slab. Just engineered floors can be floated, the simply option when hard wood flooring cannot end up being attached to the sub-floor.

Lastly, in Check out here to solid wood flooring, engineered flooring is usually a more enviroment sustainable choice, as it can yield up to be able to four times the amount of floors using the identical amount of high quality wood.

Having explained all of this, wood floors will be certainly a great choice for several software. They just are usually not necessarily the superior choice in each and every case, as a lot of people believe. When in doubt, a new flooring contractor can evaluate your web site issues and advise you because to the perfect flooring type regarding your home.