Advantages of solid hardwood flooring

Flooring is one of the important decision you have to make while building or remodelling your home. Most of the Home Owners prefer Harwood floor flooring. They come in three varieties called strip, plank, and parquet. The plank size is wider than wood strips and parquets are squares forming a geometric pattern. You can decide on the solid hardwood, engineered wood or laminate depending on your interiors.

Solid Hardwood Flooring

Solid hardwood flooring requires less maintenance. They are durable and last long. The hardwood value is shown by the age of the home. People are willing to pay a huge premium for homes with solid wood flooring. These floors are designed creatively to appear as contemporary. The types of wood like Oak, walnut, cherry, maple bring elegance to the entire home. This flooring is worth the cost spent on it since they last for a lifetime.

Alternatives

Engineered wood flooring and laminates are the alternatives to solid hardwood flooring. Today, may of the professionals are starting to prefer engineered wood. They are the blend of wood and plywood. The plywood is the bottom portion while the top is covered with finish wood. Plywood covers almost 80 to 90 percent of the engineered wood giving dimensional strength to the flooring.

Many people don’t prefer engineered wood due to its thin top layer. The scratches can not be removed like in solid hardwood flooring. If you have to remove the scratches, you have to totally refinish which makes it expensive. Solid hardwoods come pre-finished. This flooring is solid and they are easy to install and requires less downtime.

Laminate flooring is not a real wood. It contains a reinfused paper on top of the composite wood. If you look closer, you can see that the paper layer is a just photograph of the wood. It is scratch resistant and is suitable even for moist areas including kitchen and bathroom. It is very easy to install though they can not be sanded.

Due to the advantages of solid hardwood flooring, it is a preferable choice. The flooring has to be decided based on its durability since it is not often that you can change the flooring. The chosen flooring should be easy to maintain and should not get easily scratched. Even if there are some scratches, they should be easily sanded so that it doesn’t look ugly. Hence, choose with proper care to make your home look elegant.