IN 2018 WOOD FLOOR IS THE HOTTEST TREND
Wood flooring has never really gone out of style, but its popularity waxes and wanes throughout the years. However, 2018 looks like one of those years when the hottest trend in flooring is wood. There’s no reason to wonder why. Wood flooring is beautiful, durable, easy to take care of and gentle to bare feet. There is a wood floor to complement every type of decor. Our professionals at Pro Flooring are pleased to install wood flooring for residents and businesses in the North Dallas area and the surrounding areas.
Softwood Flooring and Hardwood Flooring
Softwood and hardwood don’t refer to how hard the wood is. Softwood flooring refers to wood from gymnosperms such as pine and spruce and hardwood refers to deciduous angiosperms such as oak, birch, hickory, and maple. Softwood does tend to have a more rustic look to it, and hardwood tends to be more dense. Then, there are those sort-of-woods such as bamboo and cork.
Hardwood flooring:
- Hickory is sold as red or white, with red being the hardwood and white being the sapwood. Hickory is a strong wood with a beautiful straight or wavy grain. Hardwood is from the inside of the tree, and sapwood is the softer wood between the hardwood and the bark.
- Oak is one of the most popular woods for flooring. It is beautiful, straight-grained and durable. It is a family with many species, including white, red and European.
- Ash also has a few species used for flooring, including the European, American and Japanese ash. The latter is prized for its “peanut” figure.
- Black walnut is a tough, medium-dense wood native to America. It gets its name because of the rich, purple-black of its heartwood.
Softwood Flooring
- Southern yellow pine has a lovely, cream-colored sapwood, a dark heartwood, and a beautifully figured grain. The timber of several types of trees is called southern yellow pine, including slash pine, loblolly, and longleaf pine.
- Cypress has a fine, straight grain with a creamy sapwood and a golden, honey-brown heartwood. It’s a strong and durable wood.
- Interestingly, beech is considered a type of softwood by some people, even though it is a deciduous tree. European beech has a pale, pinkish brown heartwood and a straight grab and fine texture. American beech is a bit more coarse and is reddish brown.
Others
Reclaimed Wood
This wood, which is also becoming more and more popular, is salvaged from old, derelict buildings such as mills, barns, and warehouses. It has an advantage over new wood because it’s more stable, having had a very long time to adapt to the climate.
Cork
Cork is the outer bark of an oak tree native to the Mediterranean. The one thing people like about cork other than its softness, longevity, and ability to absorb noise is that the oak doesn’t need to be killed for the cork to be taken. The tree just grows another layer of cork in a few years.
Bamboo
Bamboo isn’t harvested from a tree but from a type of grass that grows very tall in a short amount of time. One species can grow 100 feet in five years. Bamboo is treated like hardwood when it is installed.
Get in on the hottest trend in flooring and have a wood floor even and engineered hardwood floor installed in your home or business today.