If you’re installing hardwood floors in a home in Wisconsin, you’re in a great place.
One of the many wonderful things about Wisconsin is its abundance of trees that produce beautiful, durable flooring. Hardwood flooring made from Wisconsin trees is prized in places far beyond our state—and you can get it locally, and therefore at less cost.
A prime example of a widely sought-after, locally grown hardwood species is sugar maple. We’re right in the heart of sugar maple country, and numerous local manufacturers produce solid-plank maple flooring made from local trees.
Sugar maple trees (in addition to giving us the gift of maple syrup) are one of the hardest maple varieties. Most maples aren’t even hard enough to be classified as hardwood, but sugar maple is—and then some.
It’s so durable, many bowling alleys are made of it! It’s what the NBA uses for its basketball courts! If it can stand up to those uses, just think how durable it is in a home. This hardness understandably appeals to many homeowners.
Sugar maple is also valued because of its distinctive appearance. With a light color, medium texture, and closed (i.e., subdued) grain that’s often described as “bird’s eye,” “quilted,” or “curly,” sugar maple provides the clean, contemporary look many homeowners are after.
Wisconsin is also where you’ll find some of the best oak trees for flooring. Both red oak and white oak hardwood floors are tremendously popular, and Wisconsin supplies a large share of both to installers and homeowners across the country who are looking for the highest quality.
What makes Wisconsin oaks so particularly good for flooring? Our latitude.
The farther north an oak grows, the shorter its growing season. Therefore it has grain that’s more pronounced and consistent than oak grown father south, where the longer growing seasons cause the grain to be more open and varied.
Northern Oak and Southern Oak just aren’t the same—and I think most people agree with me that Northern Oak is better. I know plenty of it gets shipped to the South, even though they’ve got Southern Oak growing in their backyard.
You can get high-quality sugar maple and oak flooring practically anywhere your home is, but living in Wisconsin means that you’ll be able to get it with less expense, while also having the pride and satisfaction of knowing that your floor reflects the beauty of your home state.
That’s just one of benefits of calling Wisconsin home!
Photo courtesy of Elvis Kennedy, Jen Goellnitz. Available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.
