Wood flooring is a classic look that has transcended centuries of style. It’s natural, eco-friendly, and incredibly durable. It’s no wonder people have been constructing wood flooring for ages.
“Wood is the most sustainable floor covering option out there. It’s the only one that’s naturally renewable. A solid wood floor can last hundreds and hundreds of years. Most other floor coverings are designed to be disposable,” says Brett Miller, vice president of technical standards, training, and certification at the National Wood Flooring Association.
At one time, choosing wood flooring materials was pretty straightforward. Everything was solid wood, and the only decisions were species (think oak versus pine) and the way in which the wood was cut to create planks. Nowadays, there are an overwhelming number of options to sift through. While solid wood is still a popular choice, there is also engineered wood, reclaimed wood, and alternative materials that resemble wood. That’s why we’ve set out to simplify the market and present to you a basic guide to wood flooring materials.
We’ve consulted Brett, along with three other wood flooring experts, to help us get the job done. We tapped Mark Whatley, production manager at Bay Area retail showroom and contracting company Amber Flooring; Jeffrey Forbes, marketing manager of antique reclaimed wood manufacturer Goodwin Company in Micanopy, Florida; and Tommy Sancic, owner of Ohio-based custom antique reclaimed and wide plank flooring manufacturer Olde Wood.
Here is what you need to know.
Solid Wood
The original wood flooring option, solid wood is exactly what it sounds like. “Solid wood is, as the name implies, a solid piece of wood from top to bottom, through its entire thickness. It can typically be refinished several times during its service life,” Brett explains.
Species is one way to categorize solid wood. Softwood comes from coniferous trees like pine, while hardwood comes from deciduous trees like oak. Species can be domestic, like oak, walnut, hickory, maple, and cherry; or imported, like jatoba, cumaru, ipe, and acacia.
“We’re seeing quite a bit of a reduction in the desire for imported, tropical species,” Brett says of recent trends. “In the ’80s and ’90s there was a huge push and people were paying more money for jatoba, for example, because it was unique and exotic. Today, we’re seeing people spend more money on domestic species, specifically white oak and walnut, where the demand is higher than red oak or cherry.”
Mark believes that oak is the way to go. “If you were to ask me if there is a product out there that will last in style, stability, and durability, I would have to say oak,” he opines.
While the standard thickness of solid wood is three quarters of an inch, planks are sawn in three different ways. Flat-sawn is the most commonly used and displays more natural variations than the other two methods. Quarter-sawn requires that a log is cut into quarters before strips are created, while rift-sawn is made by cutting the log at an angle aimed at eliminating natural flecking. “If you have a rift-sawn floor, which is a straight grain floor, you’re using less wood out of the tree; therefore there’s a lot more waste, so the price of that would be more expensive,” Mark reveals. It’s also significant to note that wide planks tend to cost more.
Then, there is the choice between prefinished and site-finished floors. Prefinished boards are coated by the manufacturer, whereas site-finished flooring means the material is installed raw and finished on-site. “A prefinished floor is going to be more expensive than a site-finished floor for the material itself; however, the end user is going to pay more to have the site-finished floor finished on-site,” Brett says. For some, a prefinished floor is more appealing because it’s convenient—it’s ready to be used immediately once it’s installed. However, the place where the planks meet is then unfinished and potentially more vulnerable to damage. Others prefer site-finished floors because of the freedom to choose the finish and because the space where the planks meet gets finished during the process.
Environment is another important factor to consider when opting for solid wood. “It’s all about the environment when it comes to stability. When you install a hardwood floor, you need to understand what’s going on in your house,” says Mark. Solid wood can react drastically to the temperature and moisture content in the air. When it’s humid, solid wood expands; when it’s dry, solid wood contracts. This swelling and shrinking can forge gaps between planks over time. It’s important to research and consult experts about your specific location before installing solid wood floors.
Ultimately, tons of people pick and love solid wood. “A lot of people will look at solid wood as real wood and of a higher quality,” Brett says. “They’ll spend more on a solid wood floor than they would on an engineered product that’s similar width, color, finish, and grade just because it’s solid and it’s real.”
Engineered Wood
There is lots of misinformation out there about engineered wood, and we’re here to clear it up. “Engineered wood is anything that has a real wood wear layer, which means the top surface is real wood. It can have different constructions. It can be plywood all the way through or it can be a composite product on the bottom side,” explains Brett.
The major discrepancies apply to the top layer of solid wood, which is called a wear layer or lamella. “There are engineered wood floors that are very inexpensive, they’re at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of value,” Brett says. “There are also engineered floors that are $20 plus per square foot that are high-quality. They’re cut in wide planks, with long lengths. They’re very high-end, custom products that would be comparable to a similar solid wood product of the same width and length.”
Tommy is in agreement. “Most of the market sells engineered floors with a one-millimeter wear layer, which cannot be sanded and refinished. That product is like carpet—you throw it away after seven to 10 years. It is a cheaper product than solid wood,” he says.
In contrast, Tommy’s company Olde Wood crafts engineered floors that offer a four- or five-millimeter wear layer that can be sanded and refinished every five to 10 years—just like solid wood—so it can last a lifetime. “There’s a misconception that engineered flooring is always cheaper than solid wood. Our products, whether you buy solid or engineered, they’re the same price,” he says.
So why would you use engineered wood instead of solid wood, if they are equal in price? Brett says that the main reason to go for engineered is stability. “In a varying climate, where the floor would be exposed to extreme humidity in the summer and extreme dry conditions in the winter, an engineered floor is generally going to perform more consistently from season to season.” Rooms like basements that have drastic fluctuation in temperature are ideal candidates for engineered wood.
Reclaimed Wood
While it’s certainly still solid wood, reclaimed wood is a distinct, special material deserving of its own category. According to Tommy, “reclaimed can be anything that’s been used more than once. Antique reclaimed comes from vintage buildings that are at least 100 to 200 years old.”
For example, Jeffrey says that the Goodwin Company works with demolition contractors who dismantle 19th-century industrial buildings to purchase beams, de-nail them, and saw them into rough lumber that they turn into tongue and groove flooring. But buildings aren’t the only way the manufacturer gets reclaimed wood. It also works with permitted river loggers who find and retrieve logs that sank to the bottom of the Suwannee River 150 years ago as timber folks floated them downstream to waiting sawmills. Divers now pull these logs out of the water for the company to mill. The result of these two processes is antique heart pine and heart cyprus that originally came from longleaf pine and bald cypress trees.
Both Tommy and Jeffrey confirm that antique reclaimed wood is more expensive than other wood flooring options. Often, it can cost double the price of new solid wood. “One of the main reasons reclaimed wood is more expensive is you’re getting antique products,” Jeffrey explains. “We can guarantee that the wood you’re getting, in the case of heart cypress, can be anywhere from 800 to 2,000 years old. The second big reason is the great amount of labor that goes into the process. The wood also has more beautiful grain and tighter growth rings.”
Tommy agrees. “Antique reclaimed wood is definitely more expensive than new wood because of the labor that’s involved and the rarity of the product. It’s getting harder and harder to get these old buildings and recycle the lumber, so there’s a much bigger expense when doing that.”
Perhaps the biggest advantage of reclaimed wood is sustainability. The Goodwin Company considers itself both a flooring company and a recycling company. “If we weren’t retrieving these logs, they would just be sitting at the bottom of the Suwannee River,” Jeffrey says. “In terms of building-reclaimed wood, what is more sustainable than reusing materials out of a building that’s going to be demolished anyway?” Jeffrey insists that anyone who is interested and serious about sustainability should consider reclaimed wood.
Alternative Options
“The challenge today is there are so many products that look like real wood, but they’re not. They’re just a picture of wood on top,” Brett says. He’s referring to materials like laminate and luxury vinyl tile (LVT).
Laminate is compressed layers of fiberboard and melamine resin with a photographic image of wood grain on top. It’s covered with a clear protective layer that makes it extremely durable. LVT, which is also known for durability, is a synthetic material designed to look like wood. “Some of them look really good, but others are faker and plastic-looking,” Mark says. The biggest selling point for both LVT and laminate is that they are significantly less expensive than actual wood.
“LVT products are on a rise in the flooring industry now because they do resemble hardwood floors,” Mark says. “You can spill water on them and hose them off because they’re 100% waterproof—well, that’s how they advertise them. If water gets underneath it, you still need to take apart that floor because you don’t want mildew growing.”
Mark and Tommy, like many members of the wood flooring community, are skeptical of LVT. Tommy says that LVT is made of a chemical compound that contains harsh, often toxic ingredients that can off-gas for years once the flooring is installed. He recommends that anyone curious about purchasing LVT read up on the material on MSDS to be fully informed.
