In the past, most people wouldn’t think about buying hardwood engineered floors, unless that is, they couldn’t afford real, natural wood. However, times have changed and so has the quality of engineered wood.
There’s no doubt that a real hardwood floor is a beautiful thing and always admired by guests, but having said that, unless they are, like you, keen DIYers, they probably wouldn’t know the difference between real hardwood floors and those made with engineered wood.
How to decide which is best for your home
- Think carefully about which room the floor is for. In a kitchen or bathroom, then engineered is the best choice. Real wood floors do not do well in a damp or humid environment. Hardwood engineered floors are better at coping with moisture.
- If you decide to resell your home you can advertise hardwood engineered floors as wooden floors, as long as you don’t say they are 100 percent solid wood. That’s because engineered wood floors have a top layer of real wood, it’s the other layers that aren’t wood. The under layers are usually plywood, high quality plywood, of course.
- You can’t sand hardwood engineered floors more than two or three times, lightly, but you can sand real hardwood floors many times.
- Hardwood engineered floors are easier to install than solid hardwood ones.
- A solid hardwood floor can only be installed successfully on top of a completely flat surface.
- There’s more choice when you purchase solid hardwood for your floor. You can choose pine, Douglas fir, or any wood you fancy, but pine, for example, doesn’t work well for engineered floors.
You could, of course, have solid wood floors in some parts of the house, bedrooms and lounge, for example, and hardwood engineered floors in areas that are prone to moisture. Of course, there’s no reason for you have the same flooring throughout your home. You could lay Karndean Art Select vinyl tiles in your bathroom, utility room and kitchen. These are top quality tiles which can blend in with wood, slate or other types of flooring.
When choosing hardwood engineered flooring, don’t choose the cheapest. Cheap quality engineered wood will not be as durable as the best quality, more expensive kind.
Why not look at various flooring options?
You might have always wanted a real solid hardwood floor in your home, but you need to consider if it is practical. Don’t be blinkered. It really is best to consider all the options. For example, as well as looking at the wide range of Karndean Art Select vinyl tiles, you should also look at Quick-Step flooring. This is a laminate and as it comes in a variety of colours and styles, you should be able to match it to your wooden flooring without any difficulty. This this type of flooring is equally at home in your bathroom, kitchen, utility room and so on.
There’s nothing wrong with mixing flooring materials in your home. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to have the kind of flooring that is best suited to different rooms. This is especially so these days as the quality of laminate and vinyl flooring has changed for the better since it was first introduced in the last century.