Wood floors lend both value and appeal to homes, offices and other spaces. However, some feel it might be outside their budgets. They may not realize that they have an option that combines the best of oak flooring into a product known as engineered flooring. It has the same qualities found in solid oak floors, costs less and may be superior to oak flooring for several reasons.
Before listing those reasons, it is important to realize that engineered wood flooring is absolutely not laminate flooring. It may contain laminate or plywood inner layers but the surface is real wood. There simply isn’t any substitute for real wood on the top surface and it looks absolutely different than laminate flooring – because what is seen is real wood, not a look alike.
To make engineered wood flooring, wood is bonded with quality inner materials, including plywood, which produces a top quality flooring product. What is seen, walked on and admired is not laminate but actual oak wood – real wood, not laminate. But how often does flooring cost less than solid oak wooden floors and produce additional benefits not found in solid wooden flooring? Engineered flooring does just that, making it not only budget friendly but easier to maintain than solid oak flooring.
One of the benefits of engineered flooring is that it isn’t as vulnerable to weather, humidity and other seasonal changes as a solid wood floor. Solid wood can move or even heave upwards due to rain, moisture in the air or temperature changes. After awhile, the floor may feel springy when people walk on it. It can swell from humidity. But none of these problems exist with engineered wood flooring. All of the beauty and none of the problems of real wood floors – this is reason enough for engineered flooring to remain popular and even hard to keep in stock at many flooring centers.
Even though quality engineered wood floors can cost less than solid wood, no one who sees the floors will ever know that the inner layers aren’t solid wood. They’ll simply admire the beauty and warmth that a wood floor brings to a room. If renovating a home or business space for resale, the look of real wood could convince potential buyers to finalize the purchase. For those who want their homes to look beautiful, year after year, this can be a wise investment as well.
In some areas, it can get very chilly and under floor heating systems are popular. Engineered wood floors are the product of choice to use with these heating systems. They provide the stability needed to keep these heating systems working at maximum capacity without the risk of movement that a solid Oak floor could produce.
When it comes to laying engineered flooring, it take far less time than solid oak flooring. Less time laying a floor means that it costs less to get the job done. If hiring someone to do the work, they can quickly lay a quality floor in a fraction of the time it takes for other flooring. Since the good quality engineered boards are 22 mm thick, they are far stronger than a solid wood floor. Inexpensive installation, floor strength and all the appeal of solid wood means that home owners find engineered flooring to be a prime choice. The plywood laminate interior stands up to heavy use (again, better than solid wood floors). Yet anyone who visits will assume that the floor is solid wood.
Finally, caring for these floors is very easy and they are perfect for those who have allergies. It is much easier to keep dust off engineered flooring than carpeting. It is also environmentally friendly, since the plywood used in the interior of the boards grows faster than oak, so that only the top layer of these floors are wood, keeping the slower growing oak to a minimum. For all these reasons, engineered wood floors have all the advantages of a solid wood floor without any of the disadvantages.
