New hardwood flooring is a thing of beauty, and even more so when it fits with the look and feel of your interior design and existing decor. For homeowners who understand the importance of matching hardwood floors to a particular style that fulfills their vision, customized hardwood flooring is often the best choice.

Appearance vs. Your Needs

Many homeowners stop looking when they find hardwood flooring that has the appearance they like. That decision is perfectly valid if the flooring also happens to be the right fit for their lifestyle.

However, there are cases when it isn’t the right fit. For example, even though you’ve fallen in love with the look of a certain wood species, if it’s a relatively soft wood, it might be a better option to try a harder, more durable type of wood that can be customized to create the look you want.

If you have children or pets (or both), there will likely be plenty of foot traffic that a softer hardwood floor might not be able to withstand very well.  A flooring professional will know what to recommend to you, based on the expected amount of activity the flooring will experience.

One option to conceal any future dents or scratches is a hand-scraped or wire-brushed floor. If you are not entrenched to a smooth finish, these rustically textured floors can be an excellent selection.

Customizing to Your Needs

Fortunately, you have many options when it comes to the appearance of your floor. Staining and finishing methods allow for a high level of customization. You can seamlessly match your floors to your interior design—getting both the look you want and a floor suitable to your lifestyle.

You can have a floor that you’ll be happy with for many years to come!

It’s our mission to provide only the best quality flooring for our customers, and we take great care in helping you pick what is right for you. We’re knowledgeable, experienced specialists who can walk you through the process of choosing customized flooring. Visit our showroom to see what we can offer.

Choosing to install hardwood floors is only the beginning of the decision-making process when it comes to flooring. There’s a multitude of other decisions you have to make, regarding the type of hardwood, species, grain, color, and finish—all of which impact the final look of your new flooring.

One of the most important decisions is the one between site-finished and prefinished hardwood floors. Both have their advantages. Like any other decision, what you choose will depend on your budget and the factors that are most important to you. Let’s take a look at the advantages of site-finished hardwood floors.

More Options

If customization is significant to you, site-finished hardwood floor might be the better option. One of the main benefits of site-finished floors is that they can be made precisely to your preferences. When it comes to creating the right stain and sheen, a skilled artisan can do it on site. Site-finished flooring appeals to homeowners who have a specific design idea and feel that prefinished options would be too limiting.

Easier to Match With Existing Floors

If you’re looking to match your new flooring with existing floors or weave it into a room, you may have to invest in site-finished flooring, which can be matched with your existing floors on the spot.

With prefinished floors, you may not be able to find the exact type of stain and finish you want. Even with the same product that you purchased before, there could be slight variations in the color between different batches of prefinished flooring.

Ultimately, what you choose will depend on your preferences. Prefinished floors have improved in quality and can be the perfect choice for many homeowners. However, with site-finished floors coming from a high-quality installer like Ralph’s, you’ll be getting the benefits that prefinished floors don’t possess. Visit our showroom to see what we can do for you.

Homeowners who look at interior design trends for inspiration when remodeling their home often end up choosing to follow a few.

Of course, no one wants to incorporate a trend that will be overused and fall from grace as soon as designers stop creating hype around it. When choosing, tread carefully and go with something you know you’ll like even years in the future.

When it comes to hardwood flooring trends, a popular option—gray hardwood flooring—isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, and lighter gray floors, almost tan in color, are now leading the way. Once you see how gray hardwood flooring looks and how versatile it is, you might fall in love with it, too. Let’s have a closer look at this trend to understand why it’s so popular.

It's a Neutral Tone

Even though a lot depends on the finish and type of hardwood, most hardwood options are warm-toned, which can limit the color palette you can use for each room. However, opting for gray hardwood flooring means you have a neutral tone to work with—opening up the possibilities and complementing multiple styles of design, including  both warm and cool color palettes.

For a gray color with a brown undertone, hickory is a great choice, as you can combine it with almost any style.

It Looks Great in Modern Homes

Gray is a favorite color in modern design and a staple of the color palette that’s used often in modern homes. Being able to pair the color of hardwood floors with other elements in a room can create a great design effect and truly tie everything together. Cool-toned modern designs benefit from gray hardwood floors, although it’s always possible to add some warmth to the design if that’s what you prefer.

It's Unexpected and Unique

Despite its popularity, gray hardwood floors are still a rare sight, in the sense that people don’t expect hardwood to be gray. What’s more, a gray finish enhances the grain of the wood and makes it more visible, providing a beautiful and unique effect that people will undoubtedly notice and compliment.

You Can Go Light or Dark

In the eternal debate of light vs. dark flooring, gray hardwood floors can join either side. With a light gray floor, you’ll benefit from making the room appear more prominent and brighter, as well as ensure that dust and pet hair are less visible. However, for a more dramatic effect, you could go with dark gray. It might take a little more upkeep to keep clean, but it certainly looks impressive.

Gray hardwood flooring isn’t going out of fashion any time soon considering its versatility and unique appeal. If you’re intrigued, visit our showroom. We might have the perfect gray hardwood floor for you!

One of the best things about hardwood floors is their versatility. Whatever the look or feel you want to accomplish in your home design, the odds are that there’s a perfect hardwood floor option to complement it. Because many different factors affect the final look of the area, each hardwood floor feels different.

But why is it so important to choose the right flooring, from a design standpoint? As the base of each room, flooring is one of the design essentials that you can’t overlook. In most cases, you’ll fit it into your basic design idea and model everything else around it. To make the right choice for your design, you should be aware of the factors that affect the feel of each hardwood floor.

What Affects the Appearance of Hardwood Floors?

There’s a multitude of wood species, types of finish, and other factors that play a crucial role in determining what the final product looks and feels like.

Grain can be more or less prominent. Texture can be added by hand scraping, wire brushing, or hand distressing floors. The natural color and sheen of the hardwood can be further enhanced or changed by different stains and finishes. It’s possible to create any feel for a hardwood floor and the room it’s in.

How Different Floors Can Complement a Design

You can create a unique feel for each room design with different types of hardwood floors. A traditional, well-lived-in look will incorporate a hardwood floor with prominent grain and other “imperfections” that provide the necessary character and charm. On the other hand, in a modern design, you might want to go with a dark, smooth, and high-gloss hardwood floor instead.

While there are specific design rules to adhere to depending on the look you want to accomplish, the majority of the design will be up to your preferences. Having plenty of options will help you decide what kind of look is right for your home.

Ralph’s Floors

Here at Ralph’s, our extensive experience has taught us how to achieve the desired mood and feel for a room. We recommend visiting our showroom to find the floor that’s perfect for you.

Sometimes, while in the middle of a project, a client will call and say, “Hey, Rod, you know, I absolutely love the way the floor looks right now. I really like that raw wood look. Is there any way we can keep the floors the way they are unfinished?"

That natural unfinished look and feel of raw wood just resonates with them. Although we empathize and often agree that there is immense beauty in the natural look, we know that unprotected wood flooring can’t stand the test of time.

For the past 50 years, our answer has always been that we just couldn’t do it. Putting down a sealer will make a floor look more amber. Even trying a white stain makes the grain of the wood look different. Thankfully, we no longer have to say "no" to our customers. Over the past few years, the flooring industry has come out with some new innovative coating technology like Loba’s 2K Invisible Protect A.T.

Everything about these products is what homeowners and business owners alike are looking for:

• Extremely low sheen
• Natural oil look
• Anti-slip
• Applied over any stain.

When working with interior designers, they love the low sheen that this coating provides. According to our design friends, “a low-sheen finish allows the wood to be the central focus. If you want to emphasize the color and warmth of the wood, a low-sheen finish is a great choice.Each type of wood has unique characteristics and grain patterns, and choosing a low-sheen finish allows these characteristics to become more apparent and truly showcase the beauty of the wood.

"If you are looking for modern hardwood floors that offers more character and a natural wood look, you have to use a low sheen finish.”

In addition, the low sheen on wood floors will show far fewer scratches and dings than high-gloss floors, so watching pet paws and soccer cleats scuttle across the room won't make you worry so much—or have to refinish so frequently.

We’ve even gone as far as applying this product to cherry wood to help reduce the amount of red that comes through with stains and sealers.

Every customer we have is unique and so are their needs. There are so many different styles of homes and ways to make your hardwood floors stand out. Our goal has always been and will always be to help bring a floor into your home that shows off the beauty and care you put it to it.

Let us help you create a stunning floor in your home that will be the envy of the neighborhood. Stop by our showroom today or give us a call to book your appointment.

There are a lot of stories about my Dad. We’ve published a few in this blog and when one of our new sales people mentioned to me that her Mom told a story about my Dad getting himself a cup of coffee at her house, I knew we had another.

We’re going to be on break soon.

Spending a day or two in someone’s home creates a certain amount of familiarity. Our crew is in and out all day and there is really no way to avoid us if you are also in the house. So, back when Dad would work onsite, he would ask “Does that coffee pot work? We are going to be taking a break in 10 minutes and sure could use a cup”.

And when the coffee was ready, Dad would grab himself a cup of coffee, sit down at the table and just talk. He wouldn’t always talk about the floor, he would chat about life, the community and pretty much whatever was on his mind.

It’s part of who we are.

For a while I was embarrassed whenever he did it. Over time though I noticed something – no one ever minded making coffee. It took me a while but eventually I realized this was all part of doing business with Ralph’s. People enjoyed my Dad’s company and his willingness to just sit and chat was all part of why they chose us for their floors. Buyers have a choice and they chose someone they genuinely liked.

Somethings just don’t change.

Today I believe people choose us for the same reasons. We provide amazing service and expert capabilities but people also just like us. Our crews are friendly and while we don’t ask for coffee so much (that was really Dad’s thing) we pride ourselves in being the kind of guys you feel good about having do work in your home.

Are you considering a floor project? Get a no obligation in-home consultation today!