If you’re looking for engineered wood flooring shopping tips because it’s confusing when shopping for flooring, know you are not alone! A few days ago I went out to buy a set of sheets for my new King-sized mattress. I hate buying sheets! The experience is always the same: In my head, I have a vision of owning a set of sheets like the ones at a Westin hotel. Sheets that feel wonderful, and put a smile on my face. Soft and cozy. Instead, I get home with a set of large napkins that feel like 80-grit sandpaper. What the heck?
How am I supposed to comprehend how to get a good set of sheets? Shouldn’t there be samples of the fabric hung up for me to feel? Or a long description of the material on the packaging? All I saw was thread count. It appears that 400 may be a large number for miles on a tank of gas or the number of laps in a NASCAR race at Martinsville, but as far as thread counts go it is barely above threadBARE!!
I needed help. I should have researched more. We seldom buy sheets so we can be excused for not knowing more about them. Shopping for engineered wood flooring can be just as bad, or even worse. Most people only buy wood flooring 2 or 3 times in their life and can be excused for knowing virtually nothing about what makes a wood flooring choice better than another. While I know diddly-squat about sheets, wood flooring is a completely different subject that I happen to have over 40 years of experience in!
Know These Engineered Hardwood Flooring Shopping Tips
Today I will do my best to help you learn what you need to know in my top 5 engineered hardwood shopping tips to select the correct engineered wood flooring for your application. There is no one-size-fits-all. Lets get you the information that you need to be completely satisfied with the selection of your next wood floor, not just when it is installed, but for many, many years afterward. Unlike my sheet purchase.
Top 5 Engineered Hardwood Attributes to Consider When Shopping
1) Number of plys, or layers
2) Overall thickness
3) The Top Thickness of A Board Called The Veneer
4) Density of Core Boards
5) Species
Keep in mind that these attributes are in no particular order. I cannot tell you which one is most important for your application as I know nothing about your home. That is why we want you to be an educated buyer. So you can make decisions for yourself and not be pushed into buying what a store or salesperson wants you to buy! We have a really good engineered hardwood guide that helps define the difference between solid and hardwood floors.
Number of plys
In the pictures below you will see a cross-section of 2 different floors: an 8-ply plank of flooring from Somerset, and a 5-ply piece of flooring from Bruce.
If we are only talking plys, more plys are always better. The absolute most important goal for your engineered wood flooring is stability. Each ply, or layer, will be turned 90 degrees, or perpendicular (I looked that up) to the ply above and below it. This limits the amount of dimensional movement that the floor will experience in less-than-perfect environments. The greater the number of layers, the more stable the flooring will be.
Why does this matter to you? The reason most people buy engineered floors over a solid wood is because of the lack of stability, or propensity for movement due to moisture that is common in solid wood flooring . Either your subfloor is cement, or you want wide planks, or your home experiences big swings or large amounts of humidity. Any of these reasons mean that stability is a huge deal to you. If this is the case you should really consider our 8 ply engineered wood floors from Somerset. You can purchase these floors in a Cabin grade for under $2 and not have to worry about movement in your floor due to humidity of temperature swings. Engineered hardwood floors are used for the same reason that plywood is used instead of lumber. Stability. Installing a solid wood in an area with large swing in humidity level will insure problems in the future.
Overall thickness of Wood Floors
Thickness isn’t as important in most applications as the number of plys, but it is still something that we want to look at. The thickness will contribute to stability due to environmental concerns, as well as offer additional stability on an uneven surface that may be experienced in your home. Maybe there are low spots in your concrete or uneven joists in your wooden subfloor. Thicker wood flooring (as well as longer boards) will help to alleviate that problem. Thicker floors also allow the manufacturer to pack more material into your floor, so you can always consider thicker flooring to be better if the other attributes are the same.
The Veneer Thickness of Engineered Wood Flooring
This point is tricky! Thickness can be important but when comparing floors it is important to understand what kind of material is used in the veneer. More on that later. I have heard many salespeople say that the thickness of the top wear layer determines how many times you can sand that particular wood floor. That is hogwash. Engineered wood floors should almost never be sanded. Sanding a floor is what we do when our floor has lots of dents and scrapes. Because of the indentions, we would have to sand the whole floor to the deepest dent to make the flooring look good again. Who knows how far that is?! Might be deeper than the veneer. How do you think that will work out?
If you will choose a high-quality wood floor with lots of plys and other great characteristics the chances of your floor ever needing to be sanded are minimal. Will it get dents and other imperfections? Of course, it will but those do not have to be something that determines the lifetime of your floor. What you can do to refresh your wood floor is to refinish it. When a wood floor gets refinished it is first scuffed with some sort of abrasive, then cleaned and a new coat (or 2) of wear layer is applied. This will make the finish look brand new. And looks are important.
This was a common fix in the old day, but all of the wood flooring sold at ReallyCheapFloors.com will feature an aluminum oxide wear layer. Among the hardest substances known to man, it prevents scuffs and surface scratches in your wood flooring so refinishing should never be necessary. Finishes today are made to last up to 4 times longer than earlier finishes.
Density of Coreboards of Engineered Wood Floors
This attribute is a biggie! The density of a wood plank’s core boards, in combination with the species of the top layer, will determine how much change in appearance your engineered wood floor will exhibit over time. Sure, floors have lots of warranties! Most of them are meaningless. They all tell you that your wood floor will be free of manufacturing defects for x many years. But manufacturing defects are not what determine the lifetime of your wood floor. That will be 100% up to the change in appearance.
If your engineered floor gets dented up really bad you will need to start shopping for another. Or if the boards start moving due to instability. All of our Somerset engineered wood floors feature cores made of high-density wood. Not HDF (high-density fiber) or soft Asian woods. Those soft cores will allow your floor to dent badly and make you really unhappy with the floor. Don’t be afraid to order some of our samples and rough them up a little! After all, that is what you will be doing to your new wood floors. Might as well put them to the test! Choose wisely.
The Wood’s Species
This description will require you to pay attention! Most of the change in the appearance from your wood floor will be due to the species of the top layer. This is because the hardness, or density, of the wood, determines how much force is required to dent it. In an earlier blog, I so eloquently cover how Janka scores affect your wood flooring that a full explanation will not be required here, but I will give you a short explanation. The Janka score is a test result that tells how many foot/pounds of pressure is required to drive a .444 caliber steel ball half of it’s thickness into a piece of lumber.
Now, I do not expect a .444 caliber ball to ever be pounded into your wood floor, but the Janka score is the only way we have to compare the durability of the various species of wood that are used in the manufacture of hardwood flooring. The higher the score, the less susceptible your flooring will be to dents and gouges.
Woods like Hickory and Hard Maple will offer some of the densest options, white White Oak and Northern Red Oak are also great options. Walnut, Red Maple, and Birch tend to be much softer types of wood flooring.
Our Best Engineered Hardwood Shopping Tips
An example of the problems we face in the US is the imported wood floors that are offered, especially in big box stores. These flooring options will feature a wood species that is unknown to the American consumer. The foreign wood floor is typically given a domestic-sounding name. Like asian walnut or asian oak. Yeah, right. These floors will dent at a casual glance! Don’t be that consumer! Take a sample home and do your own version of a Janka test. Hit your wood samples with a hammer. Don’t buy crappy sheets! Read reviews from people that have bought that floor. Explore your options and shop around.
Does The Width Of the Floor Matter?
Wood flooring is made in different width's for a reason. In the solid wood flooring the yield in width in based almost completely on grading, but in the engineered hardwood flooring side of the business it is almost always dependent upon what the customer wants. Wide plank wood floors are a great addition to some homes, while in others a wide plank might be too much. Check the size of you rooms. Are they big enough for installation of wide planks? And check the lengths as well. Wide boards that are short make your wood floor look like a checkerboard, especially with lower graded wood flooring that shows contrast between boards. Planks with a darker stain are more acceptable in short lengths.
Choose an Engineered Hardwood That Make You Happy
Now you know what I know, you have no excuse to buy a floor while feeling uneducated about it. We want you to find the floor that is perfect for your home. If you have questions, please pick up the phone and talk to one of our experienced salespeople at 1-800-253-2728.
