As you search for hardwood floor for your home or office, you’ll encounter a wide range of terms. Some of the terms seem to even be describing the same thing. YOu’ll hear about laminated wood and laminate. Also, you’ll see engineered hardwood, solid hardwood, and prefinished hardwood. What does all of this mean?
Engineered Hardwood
Engineered hardwood is one of the most popular options for new installations because of its ease of installation, its durability, and its versatility. Engineered hardwood is called such because it is produced in a factory to certain specifications. Typically, engineered wood is made from three to twelve layers of wood.
The base layers of the wood can be synthetic or natural wood. Typically, they’re waterproof material or treated in a way to be waterproof. Then, the bulk of the wood plank is made from plywood, pressboard, or even unfinished wood. The wood is finally finished with a veneer of actual hardwood. That gives you a range of options that you wouldn’t have with solid wood you can checdkout floors by cordalera here..
Versatility
Hardwood obviously has to be sourced from trees, which are a limited resource. That means that common trees such as oak and hickory produce great floors at lower costs. Less common trees such as black walnut or ebony produce great floors as well but they’re more expensive; they’re a more limited resource. Engineered wood floors offer you more versatility than solid planks because much less wood is needed. Instead of entire planks of alder, you would only need thin strips of alder to use as the veneers. That means you’ll be able to afford engineered planks made from wood that you might not be able to afford as solid planks. Furthermore, you’ll be more likely to find rare wood in the first place.
Engineered wood was first designed to be installed on the first floor or in the basements of homes because those floors are often concrete. The concrete makes it difficult to affix a solid plank floor to the subfloor. Therefore, engineered wood was designed because it can be made to float; floating floors are those in which the planks are attached to each other but not actually nailed to the floor. In that case, the floor can be very easily repaired by simply removing the damaged boards and putting new ones in place.
Lastly, the price of engineered wood is typically lower than solid hardwood planks because it is made of less of the desirable wood.