Engineered Oak Flooring And What You Need To Know
Engineered Oak Flooring And What You Need To Know
Choosing the right option for your floor involves several factors. Keep reading to discover why engineered oak flooring is gaining popularity.
When you want to install a new floor in your home, it’s difficult to ignore a hardwood floor. Among the materials used for flooring, wood has been used for a long time thanks to its durability and appeal. Similarly, there are lots of wood species you can choose from including oak, cherry, and maple.
While the task of deciding the exact wood to use can be quite daunting, the process involves more than this. In fact, you need to select between engineered wood and solid wood.
What’s the difference between engineered oak flooring and solid wood?
It’s easy to think that engineered oak flooring is purely synthetic. On the contrary, it is made of wood and if it is installed in the right way, it can look just like normal solid wood.
Solid wood floors are made using planks of purely solid wood while engineered wood is made from several layers of hardwood. The upper layer is made of a slender strip of natural oak wood while the other layers are made from fiberboard or plywood.
These layers usually make the plank quite stable while the outer layer adds more beauty. To learn more click here.
However, you shouldn’t confuse laminate hardwood with engineered hardwood. Normally, a laminate hardwood has an image of wood on the surface while the core is made from several layers of fiberboard.
At the same time, this option tends to be cheaper than engineered hardwood since its surface is made of natural wood. Nevertheless, the appearance is quite different.
Where do you intend to install the floor?
When natural elements like water and heat come into contact with wood, it expands and contracts accordingly. After some time, this process may leave some gaps between planks that were tightly installed. As such, solid wood is not the best option if you want to install in a space with temperature fluctuations or high moisture content.
Since engineered oak flooring has several layers of stable plywood, it makes a great choice for kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry rooms. At the same time, the installation process is quite different and therefore you can fit it where solid wood would be cumbersome to handle.
To install a solid wood floor, you need to have a subfloor where it will be attached and this makes it difficult to install over a hard concrete. You can either nail an engineered oak floor, glue, or use staples to fasten the floor. Similarly, you can have a floating floor where the wood doesn’t have anything beneath. More often than not, installers will have some sort of cushioning material underneath and this means that you can have this floor in any place you want.
For instance, heated floors are basically floating engineered wood because the mode of installation ensures that any electrical fittings beneath the floor won’t be damaged by nails. In addition, the design of the planks makes it easy to conduct heat to the surface.
How about durability and environmental friendliness
The solid, as well as engineered wood flooring, have real wood but the later tend to score higher on environmental friendliness. The main layers of engineered hardwood are manufactured from wood waste products that have been recycled and this implies that there won’t be many trees that will be cut down to make the product.
At the same time, a single tree will make several floors since you only need a thin layer for each plank. Before you choose the type of floor you want for your home, always make sure that the product is certified. At the same time, you can choose to use wood that has been grown on salvaged land.
If you intend to leave the floor in an outstanding condition for your grandchildren, you might want to settle on solid wood. Basically, you can refinish this wood multiple times and the floor will be still good even after several generations. Be sure to read how to take care and renew your floor vents too.
On the other hand, you can refinish an engineered wood about two times. But you can do additional refinishes if the wear layer is thick enough. As a rule of thumb, always make sure you task a professional with the refinishing project. On average, good engineered oak flooring can serve you for about 10-20 years.
It’s so important to be well informed when making flooring decisions for your home. Researching and learning as much as you can about this process is essential before you make any flooring investment.
Don’t forget to read How To Easily Transform Old Floor Vents To Brand New too!
And as always, thanks so much for stopping by! If you like this post, Engineered Oak Flooring And What You Need To Know, subscribe via email below and never miss a post again!
