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So you’ve settled on hardwood flooring. Excellent choice! When it comes to durability and beauty, few floorings can surpass it. To boot, it’s one of the most long-lasting flooring types, meaning your family is bound to have a gorgeous home it can be proud of for generations to come.
But now that you’ve selected a flooring type, your work isn’t over—it’s time to choose the flooring species. Solid hardwood flooring comes with the additional challenge of selecting not only the color and texture of the wood, but the tree that makes up it as well, which can leave a lot of homeowners scratching their heads. Luckily, E Hardwoods & Flooring, where you can buy hardwood flooring online, has a few need-to-knows below that will guide you in the right direction.
Certain species of wood are designated hardwoods, while others are softwoods. You’d logically infer that woods with the former title are “harder” and thus tougher, and that those with the latter are not so much… right?
Quite the contrary! These titles have to do with how loggers interacted with a given tree species in isolated areas and how difficult it was to cut, according toPenn State. In fact, when subjected to standardized hardness testing, hardwood trees and softwoods are fairly neck and neck in some cases.
Moral of the story: don’t just go off of a wood’s category when considering it for your prefinished hardwood flooring. Do the legwork and see how it actually performs.
That aforementioned standardized hardness testing? The most common type is the Janka-Ball hardness test, and its measurements are a decent way to determine a hardwood’s performance. Check out this article fromNational Wood Flooring Association Magazine for the full scoop on it!
When the test is finished, the solid hardwood flooring is given a number that helps contextualize its hardness in relation to other hardwoods. However, as the article notes, this test is limited in scope; brand and quality of finish, for example, also affect how well a flooring will perform.
This is due to the inherent properties of the wood itself; nothing a manufacturer or a pro can do will fundamentally change this. If you plan to stain your hardwood in the future—and you don’t have to—make sure the species you have your eyes on can take it.
Do Bella Cera hardwood flooring, Somerset, or Hallmark ring a bell? At E Hardwoods & Flooring, we’ve got all your favorite hardwood brands! Check out our massive online stock today!