How to Choose Different Types of Wood Flooring

Here we take a look some different types of flooring, in order to determine which is best for your home.

Solid Wood flooring

Wooden floors remain a popular and timeless choice. Real wood floors certainly help to create a traditional, homely feel in a house. The wood will last for decades and is easy to clean. If you have pets, you will prefer being able to quickly sweep up unwanted hairs rather than having to dig them out with the Hoover. They are also far more hygienic than carpets as they harbour fewer parasites. Likewise, whilst carpets trap odours, wooden floors do not do so. The smell of wood polish is very pleasant in a home.

Choosing wooden floors is also a simple way to introduce under floor heating in your home, an efficient way to heat the house. Repairing any scratches or damage on a wooden floor is easy to do and much cheaper than having to replace the whole of a damaged carpet. Thanks to modern manufacturing techniques, wooden floors are available to a wider number of budgets, if you are looking for cheap wooden floors in London. Likewise, having wooden floors is bound to improve both the appeal and the value of your house.

Engineered Wood Flooring

A piece of engineered wood flooring is a plank made of real timber pressed into layers. As the layers are made to run in different directions, an engineered wood floor is more stable than a real wooden floor.

Generally this type of flooring is more cost effective than solid wood flooring. It does not require plywood sub-flooring and comes in larger sized planks. Installation time is cut down as planks do not need to be fastened to the floor.

It is also easier to install engineered wood flooring than solid wood flooring. Boards are wider and longer than real wood boards. They can be directly nailed onto the joists. These boards also come pre-finished so you will not need to treat the boards once they are installed. Engineered wood floors do not ‘crown’, ‘gape’ or ‘cup’, as real wood flooring boards do.

Laminate flooring

Laminate flooring is a popular alternative to real wooden floors. There are many advantages to using it in any room in the home. Firstly, it looks very similar to real wood, but tends to be cheaper. Advances in technology have meant that laminate comes in a wide range of designs imitating natural stone, ceramic materials and real wood. Secondly, if you live in a house with animals or children, you will appreciate its hardwearing and waterproof qualities.

Laminate flooring is easy to clean and is water repellent, so stains can’t soak in. It is also very easy to install laminate flooring yourself, as you won’t need to spend time sanding boards, filling cracks between planks with wood and so on. It should only take around two days to cover a room. Likewise, laminate can go over any (dry) existing flooring, so you will not need to get rid of old installations.