An introduction to hardwood flooring products

Solid Wood Flooring
Doesn't really need an explanation, it's actually a solid lump of wood, from your tree! Solid hardwood flooring looks and feels great yet it's not for everybody.
It's a natural product and hence has a few characteristics which need indicating. All timber once felled continue to respond to its environment with regards to moisture levels. Higher humidity = expansion, lower humidity = contraction so if you have an environment the location where the humidity fluctuates significantly you should think seriously before installing solid wooden flooring. Older properties with less efficient damp proofing, kitchens and bathrooms can all potentially create problems as can newly built houses with residual moisture in concrete floors. If you are in almost any doubt we would recommend getting a local flooring specialist to do a quick moisture test. Under-floor heating can also pose significant problems to solid wooden flooring and as an overall rule of thumb, we'd discourage our customers from installing solid wood over under-floor heating.

What about deterioration? Solid wood will mark. Period. If you're going to get stressed about dings and scratches forget it. Unless you wish to put socks on the dogs making your house guests wear slippers! It's an all-natural product and will produce a 'patina' as time passes. Personally I love rustic grade wood, because it's starts out less than perfect and features a great, warm, lived in feel into it and you won't get stressed once the dog skids in chasing the kitten or your child drops a metal toy, life's too short to get stressed!!
Parquet Flooring
This seems like a good point to speak about parquet flooring. Parquet or block flooring is normally installed by sticking oak blocks in a regular pattern, typically herringbone to some solid floor. The installation of block flooring should basically be attempted by full competent individuals who have access to specialist tools. We do not recommend the DIY approach!
Engineered wooden flooring
Engineered, what? Don't worry, nobody has ever encountered engineered hardwood flooring. So here goes, prepare being enlightened. It's basically a layer of hardwood bonded with a softwood base. The bottom line is it will look and feel like timber but you will use it over under-floor heating along with areas which aren't suitable for wooden installations. It comes in the traditional tongue and groove (think nailed down floorboards) and floating or click system quite like laminate flooring Peabody. So it in fact is incredibly versatile, it uses much less of the raw natural resource which can be no bad thing also it can be as fast to lay being a click system laminate. We recommend the use of engineered flooring to everyone of our customers.
So it's perfect, right? Well don't forget the top layer remains to be real wood so you will need to take into account the damage points highlighted in the timber section.
Laminate flooring
OK, that is easy as generally everyone knows about laminates. They are manufactured by bonding a picture, basically a photograph onto a softwood base. An ultra hard wearing surface is then applied. They come in endless styles and colours and can be fitted by a person with reasonable capability. Some laminates feature a 50 year domestic use guarantee which present you with some idea how hard wearing they are. So if there is a busy house otherwise you want some with the slightly more 'out there' designs they really are a great choice.