Making The Correct Choice On Hardwood Flooring
We all have probably been spending more time than usual in our homes in the past two years. You may be looking around at your worn-out carpet or dated tile and dreaming of updating it with something more beautiful. Do you love the look of hardwood floors, but not the price range or work it takes to find the one that fits your home?
Engineered wood flooring can be a great alternative to waterproof solid wood floors. Read on to learn more about this type of flooring and all the benefits it can bring to your home.
1. Engineered Flooring Can Be More Affordable
One of the biggest benefits of engineered wood flooring compared to traditional hardwood is that it’s much more affordable. Hardwood floors can cost between $12 and $20 a square foot, depending on the board width, species, and finish. This means that refinishing just one 10’ x 10’ room could cost you up to $2,000 for materials and installation.
Engineered wood floors, however, are as little as $2 per square foot. Of course, as with any flooring material, your price per square foot will depend on board width, material, quality, finish, installation, and so on. But with engineered wood, that same 10’ x 10’ room could set you back just $200 to refinish.
2. Easy to Install
Part of what makes traditional hardwood floors so expensive is installation costs. You need to have a professional install your hardwood floors if you don’t feel comfortable installing them yourself. These installation costs can be up to half of your total price if you’re looking for a custom pattern.
But when you work with engineered wood, you can eliminate those flooring installation costs altogether. Engineered wood planks are easy to install yourself, often coming with a click-and-lock format or tongue-and-groove format that makes it simple to attach the boards to each other. You could have a new floor in as little as a weekend for a fraction of the cost.
3. Durable
While wood floors are beautiful, one of their biggest drawbacks is the wear they experience. High-traffic areas will get worn down over time, becoming discolored and maybe even splintered. Boards can also dry out and become cracked if they aren’t maintained properly.
Engineered hardwood flooring is made with a solid wood top, called a veneer, of genuine hardwood layered over a base of high-quality processed wood core layers. These core layers called “plys” give engineered flooring an extremely sturdy base that helps it to last longer, very similar to a piece of plywood. These multiple-ply cores are crack, moisture, and warp resistant. You can put it down in higher moisture areas without worrying about the boards becoming splintered or cupped. The plywood core is much more stable than a solid wood floor.
4. Sustainable
Although we all love the look of real wood floors, the unfortunate truth is that they’re not very sustainable. Each floor uses dozens of trees, and a lot of wood is lost during the milling process in the form of sawdust. Wide-plank floors, in particular, require larger, older trees and so use resources that are even less renewable.
Because engineered hardwood contains a processed wood core and a solid wood top/veneer, it’s a much more sustainable alternative. The processed cores are made with less desirable pieces of wood that would otherwise be discarded as scrap. And the veneer layer on top allows for the same visual and textural experience of solid wood floors, without an excessive amount of wood being used.
Engineered wood flooring also helps to reduce some of the sawdust loss of the lumber industry. The veneers for engineered planks are sliced, rather than sawn, so no sawdust is created at all. This helps to stretch each log further and cuts down on the need for further logging to create wood floors.
5. Makes Exotic Woods Accessible
Of course, it comes as no surprise that many of us like the look of more exotic woods. If you’re designing a modern house, the drama of wenge or padauk can elevate your space. Fans of more classic designs may love the elegance – though not the price tag – of black walnut.
Engineered wood flooring makes these more expensive and exotic woods more accessible to the average consumer. Because the planks only use the expensive wood on top, you don’t have to pay for a whole plank of expensive wood. And since those veneers are sliced, not sawn, less wood gets lost to sawdust, meaning manufacturers can afford to charge less per slice.
6. Resistant to Moisture Changes
If you’ve lived with hardwood floors before, you know that one of the biggest challenges is managing size changes. As temperatures and humidity change throughout the seasons, wood expands and contracts. Floors that were gappy in the winter may start to warp or buckle during the warm, wet summer months.
With engineered wood flooring, you don’t have to worry about your floors changing size with the weather. Engineered cores with multiple plys are made by gluing down each ply layer of wood with the grain direction pointed in opposite directions. This keeps the wood core from expanding too much in any single direction, meaning your floors will stay much the same size all year long.
7. Comes in Wider Sizes
Wider plank floors can be gorgeous, especially in large rooms, where they’ll fill out the space. But when you install solid hardwood floors, you’ll have to pay a lot more for wider planks. These boards have to come from older, wider trees, which are harder to find and more time-consuming to grow.
Engineered wood, however, can give you access to wider boards for just a little more money. Although they do use the veneer on top, this veneer can be put together from narrower pieces. Manufacturers can also get more veneers from the widest part of the log, making it more affordable to create these wider planks.
8. Low-Maintenance Floor
One of the best things about engineered wood flooring is that it’s all but maintenance-free. With traditional hardwood floors, you need to plan to polish them every few months to keep them looking good. You’ll also have to refinish your floors every seven to ten years, which can be an expensive endeavor.
Engineered hardwood floors are simple to take care of, both on a day-to-day basis and over the life of the floor. Day-to-day, you can sweep and mop them as you would any other floor. But you don’t have to worry about polishing or refinishing for a longer period of time, especially depending on the wearlayer you have on the floor.
9. Wood Can Be Refinished
Although you don’t have to refinish your engineered hardwood floors, it can help to keep them looking their best. Even with the improved durability of the floor, your engineered planks will wear down over time. But many other laminate options can’t be sanded down and so have to be replaced when they wear out.
Because engineered hardwood flooring has a top layer of genuine hardwood, it can actually be sanded down. You can only do this once or perhaps twice during the life of the floors, so be sure to be judicious about when you refinish them. But this sand-ability can help engineered hardwood floors to last longer and be more versatile than other laminate options.
It’s important to note that not all engineered hardwood floors have the same thickness veneer on top of them. Floors that have a 1/4″ veneer can be sanded multiple times, as long as the sanding is done carefully. Floors with a thinner veneer may only be able to stand up to one sanding before the veneer disappears entirely.
10. Feels Genuine
Have you ever walked across a floor that looked like wood only to discover it felt and sounded like plastic? Many laminates can replicate the look of genuine wood planks, but there’s no faking that resonance and warmth. Luckily, with engineered hardwood planks, you don’t have to.
Because engineered hardwood planks are made with 100 percent real wood, they feel like the genuine article. You get the feel of wood grain underfoot and the sound of an actual wood floor. Unless you tell them, your guests will never know your walnut floors aren’t solid walnut the whole way through.
Discover the Benefits of Engineered Hardwood
Engineered hardwood is a fantastic option for anyone looking to get the beauty and feel of wood flooring without the price tag and maintenance. These planks are more durable, sustainable, and affordable than traditional wood floors. They can also be refinished and require less maintenance than solid wood planks.
If you’d like to discover the benefits of engineered hardwood for yourself, check out the rest of our site at Really Cheap Floors. We offer a variety of flooring options, ranging from engineered hardwood to luxury vinyl plank to prefinished solid hardwood. Shop our engineered hardwood floors today and discover amazing products and great service at a price you can afford.
