Choose the Perfect Hardwood Floor for Your Home

Choosing which hardwood to put on your floor can be one of the biggest decisions that you will face when building or renovating your home. There are many different and often difficult decisions to make for your floor. Some of them include: What thickness to go with? Non-finished, Pre-finished, or Engineered wood? How wide of a plank to go with? What will look the best with the doors, paint, cabinets, tile/carpets? What grade to choose? A great place to start is with a story board or samples of color and textures surrounding the floor.

Some of the benefits of hardwood flooring through out the home includes durability, a large variety, easy to maintain, hypo-allergenic, environmentally friendly, natural, stylish and eye pleasing, and worth every penny! With our health conscience society, people realize that carpet is a health hazard to the allergenic individual. Carpets collect dust, mites, bugs, and many other unclean things that are not good for the body. Hardwood flooring is definitely the floor to install.

Market trends towards choosing which hardwood floor is a consistently evolving process. The consumers of hardwood floors in North America only used to buy unfinished hardwood, now they are buying pre-finished hardwood, and slowly moving into the engineered hardwood floors. Much of this trend shifting comes from the supply and demand curve. As the prices of the higher end products come down, the demand goes up. Most everyone enjoys having the newest and brightest thing on the market and when affordability is a factory people want to buy the products.

So what is next for the Hardwood flooring industy? They have already come out with a blended choice of any tree out on the market to make a floor out of. These include Bamboo hardwood flooring, Cork hardwood flooring, etc. The bottom line is choosing the best hardwoodflooring for your home is a difficult decision and needs to be thought out carefully. Consult with a professional in colors and textures and perhaps it will be and easier decision.

Prefinished Or Unfinished Wood Flooring: Which Should You Choose?

So you’ve decided to install wood flooring in your home. But now you come to this decision: Should I install prefinished or unfinished wood flooring? Read on to find the advantages and disadvantages of each.

If you are looking for a complete do it yourself project, a prefinished hardwood floor is a good choice. Pre-finished hardwood floor boards come already sanded, stained, and sealed. This makes your only job to attach the floor. You must be very careful not to scratch the boards during installation since they are already finished.

Unfinished wood flooring, on the other hand, comes as natural wood cut into boards. It is after installation that sanding, staining, and sealing takes place. The process of attaching the wood to the floor can be a complete do it yourself project, but the finishing of the wood usually requires the help of a professional. Sanding can especially be difficult, and if you don’t know how to operate the equipment properly, the unfinished wood flooring can be damaged.

Another thing you need to consider is how much time do you have for this project to take place. With prefinished wood flooring, after the wood is attached there is no waiting time before using the floor. With unfinished wood flooring, after installation it must be sanded. After sanding has taken place, all the dust must be removed from the floor for it to be stained and sealed. Staining and sealing the floor can make the area unusable for two or three days since the area must be given sufficient time to dry. The extended time it takes to install unfinished woodflooring is usually the reason it is the primary choice for new homes, not remodeling jobs.

Regardless of the type of flooring you choose, you will get a beautiful wood floor that will add value and comfort to your home.

5 Basic Tips When Choosing Hardwood Flooring

Timeless beauty, clean lines, strength and durability as well as the ease of cleaning and the classic look make hardwood flooring the perfect choice for your home.No matter what your personal style is, there is a flooring choice for you because of the unlimited selection available. But before you rush out shopping for your hardwood flooring, keep these tips in mind.

Set a budget for yourself. Having a wide variety of flooring to choose from is great, but the downside is that it is easy to get overwhelmed quickly, and this makes you very susceptible to overspending. Remember to balance style with quality with your budget when you make your final choice.

Tip #1
You will be wise to match the room with your choice of flooring, whether hardwood or otherwise. For example, do not try to put hardwood flooring in a bathroom, due to the high levels of moisture a bathroom receives.

Tip #2
Different areas of the house demand different types of wood. For example, wood floors that have very light or very dark finishes typically do not fare well in the kitchen.

Tip #3
Choose a hardwood flooring that has an appropriate finish to match your lifestyle. A sitting room that is seldom used will let you get away with a lighter finish. However a hallway or living room will get continual traffic and requires a choice that offers a tougher finish that can stand up to a lot of wear and tear.

Tip #4
Consider installation - doing it yourself or having a professional installer do it for you? Many people successfully install their own flooring, but only after they have done their homework. It is often easer to hire a professional, but do you due diligence when selecting a hardwood flooring installer. You will want to be absolutely sure that it will be installed correctly.

Tip #5
Choosing the color and style of the floor can be the fun part. Choose a hardwood that fits your personal taste and your lifestyle. The comparatively high cost of the flooring and installation demands choosing a wood that will not go out of style quickly.

Installing Hardwood Flooring – Tips To Make Your Job Go Smoother

Installing hardwood flooring can take place in several ways depending on the type of hardwood flooring that you have. If you have solid hardwood, you have to look at the type of wood you have. You can have parquet flooring, which usually comes in tiles of 6 inches by 6 inches or strips or planks that can be as much as 3 inches wide. If you have laminate wood flooring then you have to look at a different method of installing hardwood flooring.

Whether you choose laminate flooring or solid hardwood flooring, the directions for installing both of them are printed on the inside of the packaging. If you have previously installed hardwood floors and now you want to install glueless laminate flooring, you do need to read the directions for installing laminate flooring. When you are installing hardwood flooring made of solid wood, you have to open the packages and let the wood become acclimatized to the humidity and temperature of your home. With laminate flooring, you have to do the exact opposite. You should not take this flooring out of the package until you are ready to start installing.

Successful installation of hardwood or laminate flooring depends upon careful planning. Even if you are installing hardwood flooring over an existing concrete or vinyl floor, you do have to sweep and vacuum the floor to remove all the dust and dirt. If you are not sure of exactly how much laminate flooring you will need, the directions for installing laminate flooring also include directions for measuring the room to calculate the amount of flooring that you need. When you intend to install glueless laminate flooring, you can also bring your measurements into your local flooring store and have the experts do the calculations for you.

If you are wondering how to install glueless laminate flooring and be able to keep it on the floor, each of the planks lock together with the tongue and groove design. When installing hardwoodflooring like this, you cannot glue, nail or staple it in any way. When you start installing always consider the way the light shines into the room. Begin laying the planks toward the light and in a hallway always install glueless laminate flooring lengthwise.

The directions for installing laminate flooring will tell you that you lay the first plank with the grooves against the wall. Place spacers where they are needed when installing hardwood flooring between the wall and the plank to maintain ½ inch extension gap. You will have to mark and cut the planks as you are installing the flooring because they are of random lengths. Always begin in a corner when installing hardwood flooring and the first board in the row should be a full plank.

7 Tips For Selecting Perfect Flooring

DESIGN STYLES

With thousands of colors and styles to select from today it can seem like a daunting task to make the right flooring choice. To narrow the field down it is recommended that you select a flooring style that complements your overall interior design style. Nothing will look worse that a glaring clash of styles, so make sure your new flooring complements your existing (of planned) interior design.

SITUATIONAL FACTORS

Almost every install will have physical or functional requirements that will further narrow down the scope and selection of an appropriate hardwood or laminate flooring system. Here is a brief summary of factors to consider:

FLOOR TRAFFIC EXPECTATIONS

The quantity and type of traffic you expect on your floors will impact the flooring material you can choose. Laminates offer high durability, as well as wood species that have high "hardness rankings" on the Janka scale. Softer woods are generally not a good selection for high traffic areas.

SUB FLOORING

The quality of any new hardwood flooring installation can only be as good as the subfloor underneath. For the best outcomes, the subfloor should be dry, stable, and level. Concrete subfloors generally are only acceptable for laminate installations, but you should be mindful of installing a quality underlayment the provides an appropriate moisture barrier as well as good sound installation. Poor laminate installations will sound very hollow when walking on it.

HUMIDITY AND TEMPERATURE

To prevent warping and cupping of floors make sure there is adequate ventilation and regulated temperatures thought the year. Laminates work best in areas that experience higher humidity levels.

INSTALLATION

The time and cost of installation is an often overlooked factor in floor selection decisions. Glueless click-style floating laminate floor systems can be a weekend project for experienced do-it-yourselfers, and can save a lot of installation labor. Other flooring installation methods are generally more complex and will require professional installation in most cases.

WARRANTY

Making a successful claim under a flooring warranty often requires that you can demonstrate the product was installed exactly as per the manufactures recommendations and that the damage is not a product of wear and tear or poor workmanship. Hiring a professional installer and dealing with a large brand name product that has an established track record is your best protection.

How to Design a Hardwood Floor Like a Professional

The installation of your new hardwood floor is probably the most rewarding remodeling you can do. The floor usually sets a feeling and tone of a room whether as a dominant feature or a neutral setting. The floor adds on a beautiful appearance to a room and its comfort too. Yet above all, the flooring must be practical, durable and fit in with your daily living.

How to choose a wood floor color that's right for you

Color choices for your hardwood floor are a very important step. In selecting your color, don't stay with the first one that catches your eye because you probably will find another color you never even thought of. Here are some tips to help you through this process. Look at the color and not the name. Great fancy names can really influence you - more than you would like to admit. Trust instinct, which comes from inside you and greatly reflects a certain color preference. Take a few days to make your final decision on the color. Your hardwood floors are worth it. Break it down to three or four colors and take the sample home. If you are creating a complete décor, make sure you compare all the wood samples with paint samples of all your new colors and any upholstery or wall coverings you may have. Check your colors at different times of the day, as light changes throughout the day. Put the samples on the floor and move them around the room to get a good idea of how the color will look.

Designing your hardwood floor theme like a pro

Designing informal and formal theme or any design depends on the utilization of the elements of design. A strong formal look is created with squares, stripes, or lines. A border stenciled on a wood plank floor will look cozy. Curved and floral patterns have the ability to soften colors or maybe even unify your floor space. Your curved patterns also give a sense of motion. You can also change your perception in a room. For example, by extending a linear pattern lengthways in a room, you will give the appearance of the room being longer. If you put the same pattern across the room, the feeling is wider and shorter.