Hardwood floors are truly a sign of elegance and beauty.  Hardwood floors provide warmth, luxury and grandeur to any home. There are many other benefits of hardwood floors as well, such as the cost value they add to your home, their simple care and cleaning, their great style coupled with durability and as always, they’re a natural and a safe flooring choice for the environment. 

The hardwood floor selecting process can be a bit overwhelming though.  Experts state that the selecting process for your home or office is simply a matter of knowing the facts, comparing the types and prices, and selecting a reputable wood flooring professional to install your new floor.  There are many factors to consider when shopping for types and materials.  The looks, feel, color, and even the sound of real hardwood are important to the choosing process. 

Everyone knows the longevity that these floors have. They can be refinished several times and they will look like a new one. Hardwood floors will last a lifetime, and also will be the investment of a lifetime.  Certainly hardwood floors will stand up to the demands of everyday life due to their durability.  Many people believe flooring such as laminate, cork, vinyl and tile just can’t hold a candle to the beauty and authenticity of hardwood floors. 

There are three types of hardwood floors: solid, engineered, and acrylic impregnated.  Solid simply means solid constructed.  Engineered means products constructed in various layers with graining alternating in various directions.  Acrylic impregnated is wood injected with an acrylic material resulting in a very hard and durable hardwood flooring choice.  There are also three styles of hardwood floors:  strip, plank, and parquet.  Strip is hardwood flooring with a lineal tongue and groove construction that comes solid or engineered, unfinished or prefinished. Plank is the same as strip except in comes in varying widths.  Parquet is hardwood flooring that is pieces of wood constructed into a pattern or design, most often geometric in nature. 

         Experts also agree there are certain things you should remember when setting out to choose a hardwood floor for your living or work area.  First it is always important to set a budget.  Remember, if the price sounds too good to be true, it’s most likely of lesser quality.  Choose a wood floor according to the rooms use – many types of wood are more suitable for a certain room than others.  Next, choose a style or design to match or compliment the room’s décor.  Nowadays experts suggest picking a floor shade that is opposite the color of furniture in the room to avoid a serious clash.  Choose a wood floor product with proper finish that can handle the traffic for that specific area/room in your home.  And lastly, and probably the most important factor, is to always use a professional wood floor contractor.  There are many technical concerns that can adversely effect or compromise the life of your beautiful new wood flooring. 

Do you want your home flooring to be elegant? Do you want to walk on a floor that suits the style you desire and reflects the kind of your personality? Then get that hardwood flooring of your choice.

Your Style, Your Floor!

How would hardwood flooring suit your style? Well, hardwood flooring has been a choice of many people who want a classic feel in their houses. It is elegant and can give a rustic country look as well. It could give your urban home a rural motif that could make your mood more relaxing when you go home from work.

Moreover, hardwood flooring comes in different colors and styles that could really go well with your choice. It has already developed overtime from the simple brown color in different variations.

When you want a plain floor, try installing planks. This kind of hardwood flooring gives you wide pieces of planks. Should you choose this style, you could save energy in installing because you only install a number of woods and could also save you money.

If your home is small and you want it to look bigger, install smaller strips of hardwood flooring. The strips are only three inches or less in size.

Alternatively, single piece hardwood flooring can give you a more solid look in your house. This kind varies in thickness and can last long years. It is also easy to change or refurnished when needed because it is only one piece.

The parquet hardwood flooring gives you a tile look on your floor. Through this kind, you can make patterns in your floor. It comes in wide variety of shapes and colors like that of its ceramic counterpart.

Caring For Your Elegant Floor

Since wood flooring is indeed a major attraction in your house, it as well a major investment. For it to last for long years, it has to receive proper care. Other than regular cleaning or dusting, it should also be maintained and refurnished as needed.

Use hardening oil, not floor wax as used with cement floors, in maintaining your hardwood flooring. It could make your floor shinier and sturdier. Ask your hardware stores to recommend you specified wood wax. Apply such regularly like every one year or 18 months.

Dragging heavy furniture on your hardwood flooring can give it a lot of scratches and damages. To avoid these, you can apply three coating varnish. It protects the wood from possible scratches and makes it more durable. However, it is best that you carry the furniture than dragging them or protect the lower surface with rugs or cloths before dragging them.

Though wet mopping is a good way to clean floors, don’t do it on your hardwood flooring. Vinegar and bleaching agents are also good cleaners, but they are not for your floor, too. Water and vinegar may be the worst enemy of wooden floors. Water loosens the wood fibers and makes in weaker. It could also make the floor swell on its edges. It is not recommended to use wet mops rather use a mister and a dry mop to clean the floor.

On the other hand, vinegar contains a strong acid that could easily cause discoloration to your hardwood flooring. Use vinegar and you immediately loose your floor’s elegance.

The floor of your house somehow reflects what’s inside it and the people living in it. As such, it is best to invest in a floor that suits your style and installing hardwood flooring could be your best choice. It is stylish, it is elegant!

At the height of Internet technology, a customer looking for hardwood flooring or any other kind of products may probably have been checking the Internet and online stores over and over again. Internet provides a lot of information that could confuse a buyer. By typing hardwood flooring on a popular search engine like Google or Yahoo may turn thousands of results. To make the most out of this information, you should establish several criteria for what you are looking for.

In choosing the right hardwood flooring for you situation, you need to take into account the weather patterns and the climate in your area as this would have an important effect on the flooring that you will buy. In this regard, the kind of hardwood that might work best in Southern California might be different for that in Montana. If your location has special climate and weather patterns, you might have to look for a person within your locality who is knowledgeable with wood flooring.

It should be remembered though that wood flooring is usually unfinished when installed in your home. They are then sanded and finished after the installation. In order to create that metallic finish of the hardwood flooring, the suppliers use metal oxides, which the hardwood can handle.

Hardwood flooring offers several benefits to your home. It can help enhance the beauty and the warmth of your home. Also, it will also be easier for you to clean and care for the flooring. Your choice of flooring will also greatly enhance your sense of aesthetics and the overall mood that you want to create in your home. Not only that, hardwood flooring is natural and friendly to the environment.

You also need to select the species of trees that you will choose for your wood flooring. You may choose from Ash, Birch, Cherry, Exotic, Maple, Oak, Pecan, and Walnut. They come in different colors, depending on what you choose them to be. The colors may either be dark, medium, or light. The color you choose should coincide with the overall motif of your home. In addition, there are also several styles that you can choose from. You can actually choose your own patterns for your hardwood flooring. The broader categories of patterns are plank, strip, parquet, wide plank, and your own custom pattern.

When you have chosen the kind of hardwood for your flooring, it will contribute to the homey feeling to our house. In order to maintain that look, you should be able to care for your hardwood flooring by doing the following simple activities. You have to vacuum often and remove grit and abrasives that stick on the floor. Likewise, water and liquid spills should be dried off quickly to avoid water damage. You also need to purchase a spray solution for the hardwood floor. Wax, buff and polish should also be avoided as these could damage your floor. Every now and then, you have to rearrange your furniture and rugs so that the floor will age evenly. Shoes that can damage the floor should also be kept off the floor.

With proper choice and appropriate care, your hardwood flooring can last for a lifetime.

When buying or installing hardwood flooring in your house, there are some things you should know. You may be wondering after all what you have spent for your money, time and effort is not really what you wanted or desired.

Many, if not most, hardwood flooring manufacturers or dealers have their showrooms to get the attention of customers. Samples in the showrooms are good but they may look a little different with that something you bought or installed. Why are they not the same? One simple reason is that, samples in the showroom are exposed to different environmental factors like heat, wind and light. Over time the components may cause the color and durability of the materials to diminish. You can ask any expert from a hardwood flooring store to show you the original and what color changes you should expect over the years.

When choosing hardwood flooring, consider how visible scratches could be. There are types of wood that show scratches more prominently. Define with the manufacturer or dealer if scratches are covered with the product warranty because most of them do not. Avoid any disappointment on your part when you see scratches on your hard earned hardwood flooring. Warranties usually cover the wear layer or veneer only and not clearing scratches on your finish installed floor. Two of the hardwood flooring that show prominent scratches are maple and high gloss finishes.

Hardwood floorings are temperature sensitive. Hotness or coldness in temperature could cause the floors to swell or shrink. These effects could give your floor gaps. Gaps depend on the moisture content of the temperature. What was installed as flawless hardwood flooring could have gaps over time. Micro beveled hardwood flooring may seem to have unparallel and unsmooth edges but these kinds of flooring show lesser gaps. On the other hand, highly engineered hardwoods could also make your flooring good as new and without gaps when installed correctly even though your house faces different weather conditions.

When your budget is low in installing hardwood flooring in your house, expect that there are many short pieces. These are especially made to cover the gaps between the bigger pieces of wood. However, you should not worry about these short pieces. As long as they are installed correctly and maintained regularly, your wood flooring could still last through the years.

If you are planning to stay in a house over a long period of time and have decided to install hardwood flooring it is best to use engineered hardwoods with thicker wear layer and plies. These factors enable you to refinish the flooring when parts of it are already worn out. Typically, during the presentation of hardwood flooring, manufacturers and dealers do not discuss how many times a certain product can be refinished. As such, do not forget to ask them. Thick wear layers with ½ inch or more in measurement could be finished two to three times.

Hardwood flooring is a big money investment. However, many people may still want to install hardwood flooring amid low budgetary cost. With that low budget, can they still have the hardwood? Yes they can. However, there are few considerations that they need to take. Lower priced hardwood flooring may not be as good and as durable compared to the engineered ones and may not have warranties. In that case, engineered hardwoods with thinner wear layer and lesser color are cheap and could be put into the list.

The floor you use inside your house could be a reflection of what are inside, people and things. As such when you choose to install hardwood flooring, be sure to know at least the basics of it or consult a professional to help you choose the best kind of hardwood flooring for your house.

There are certain types of hardwood flooring that are suitable for certain locations in the house. It is in this case important to understand where such kind is to be installed. Installing the hardwood flooring to the right place enables you to conserve your time, money and effort for the years to come. If you do such, you need not reinstall another hardwood flooring in the next 10 years but only need maintain it and refinish in time.

Hardwood flooring is one of the best investments you can have for your house. If you want wood, do not install and stick to cheap but not durable plywood, instead, choose to install hardwood flooring.

One of the considerations in installing hardwood flooring is its wear layers. The thickness of this layer varies; though, the thicker the better. Thick wear layers can be refinished more times than thin ones. Hardwood flooring may be worn out as it used over time. There may be scratches, small cracks on the floor but with this thick wear layers, you can reconstruct the floor for it to look as good as new. However, thin wear layers are sold in lesser cost. Hardwood flooring with thin wear layers could still be durable but not as those with thick ones.

Refinishing of hardwood flooring could be done once is every five years. With think wear layers or veneer, refinishing could be done at least two to three times depending on the worn out part. Hardwood flooring with thin wear layers may need necessary reinstallation when damages occur where there is no way to refinish it. If are keeping a lot of heavy furniture in your home that could cause your flooring to be damaged when they are dragged or rearranged, it is best to install hardwood flooring with think veneers.

Wear layers of hardwood flooring could measure from ¼ to 1/8 inches. Other wear layers have 9/16 or 3/8 inches measurements.

Another consideration when choosing to install hardwood flooring to you home is the ply of the wood. Again, the thicker the ply is the better. Hardwood flooring products could vary from two to ten plies. Though those with more plies could last longer, they are more costly that their lesser plies counterpart. In any case, should you plan to stay in a house for five to ten or more years, choose those with thick wear layers and more plies for durability and longevity sake.

After those two considerations, you can now choose the size or style of your hardwood flooring. You can have something with different colors that match your taste and could look like its ceramic or marble counterpart. Wood flooring has already developed from its original brown woody color.

You may choose to install planks that are made of wide pieces of wood or strips made of smaller pieces. Other preferences of hardwood flooring include single piece which can give a solid look and parquet that looks like a tile.