When building or renovating a home, selecting hardwood flooring is great fun—but it’s also a challenge. The diversity of options allows you to pick out exactly what you want, but the multitude of choices can be overwhelming.
To help in the process of deciding on the perfect floors for your home, we’ve found that it’s useful for homeowners to focus on three different aspects of finished hardwood floors—quality, function, and appearance. In this post, we’ll discuss quality, and our next two posts will explore function and appearance.
When referring to quality, we’re talking about all elements that make up quality, not just the finish. Also, choosing the right product for your application is extremely important. You can have the highest quality solid hardwood floor and if you put it in the wrong environment, it will most likely fail. Always consider the following in regards to quality. Is the wood species hard enough to live up to your lifestyle? Is the milling of the flooring such that the product fits together snugly and doesn't move around a lot? If engineered, look at the wear layer.
Hardness
The harder the wood, the less likely it will dent, and there are significant differences in hardness among species. Even within a species, there can be variation. For example, the Northern oak we use is substantially harder than oak from the South.
The importance of hardness will largely depend on how the floor will be used. If it’s in a heavily traveled area, the ability to withstand wear becomes an especially attractive characteristic. Particularly if you anticipate your floors will be exposed to pets’ nails and children playing, or if the flooring will go in a kitchen, harder woods are usually a smart move. Although, having a wood species with a little texture in the surface can more than make up for a little difference in hardness. In an area that is going to take some abuse, I would recommend a white oak with a little texture on the surface over a smooth-grain species like maple. Although the maple is harder, the dents will show up a lot more due to its smoothness.
But harder wood isn’t always the right choice. If you are absolutely in love with the way a particular wood looks but it’s not one of the harder woods, don’t automatically write it off. Like all aspects of finished hardwood flooring, your choice will depend on your personal taste and situation.
There’s also cost to consider. Although not always the case, harder woods (especially exotic hardwoods) are typically more expensive. But as you compare price, remember that the harder the wood, the longer you can probably go without re-sanding it.
Milling
Wood that is milled precisely will fit together just right, while wood that has been milled according to less-stringent specifications often ends up showing irregularities. Unfortunately, raw wood from the United States is often shipped overseas (e.g., China) where it is milled with less quality control than if it had been milled here. It’s shipped back to the U.S. and sold at a lesser cost than properly milled wood. But as the adage goes, you get what you pay for.
Wear Layer
Most 3/4" thick solid hardwood flooring material has a wear layer of approximately 1/4". This means you can refinish this floor about five times before sanding through its wear layer. Engineered floors very significantly, from being able to sand and finish them about four times to not at all. Make sure the floor you choose has a thick enough wear layer that it can be resanded and finished in the future if necessary?
In our next post, we will turn our attention to “function”—the ability of hardwood floors to resist cupping, crowning, and gapping.
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