Home Life Perks

Wood Flooring: Not Such a Hard Choice

Give the rooms in your home a new beginning by installing rich, stylish and polished hardwood floors. Popular, durable, and cost effective, hardwood flooring is a compelling choice for a number of reasons:
  1. Looks great and fits easily into any decor with it's timeless appeal and beauty.
  2. Lasts a lifetime and will add value at the time of resale.
  3. One of the most ecologically sound decisions you can make for your home. Wood is the healthiest option for indoor air quality.
  4. More cost effective than you may think and well worth the investment.
  5. Easy to maintain and if kept properly, will only look better with age.
Three important factors to consider when purchasing hardwood floors is their durability, cost and color:

Durability:

If durability is an important part of your decision, consider staying away from woods like white pine, fir, and chestnut for your flooring. These softer woods can easily dent and not support large amounts of force. Varieties like walnut, cherry, and teak ranked the highest on hardness and durability tests conducted within the industry. (Janka hardness test)

Cost:

When considering price, it is important to remember that plank size, color, and finish all play a role in how expensive your hardwood flooring will be. Typically, exotic woods like Brazilian cherry or Australian cypress can run upwards of $13.00 a square foot, while more common and readily available woods like Maple, Pine, or Bamboo will generally cost between $4-6 a square foot. It is also important to remember to add on at least $2-4 a square foot for labor and installation.

Color:

Variety is also a large part of what makes hardwoods so appealing. The wood grains, board widths, and different types of wood all factor into the color of hardwood floors. Below is a small chart to help you break down what woods would fall under the categorization of light, medium, or dark.

LightMediumDark
  Ash   American Cherry   American Walnut
  Beech   Hickory   Bloodwood
  Birch   Red Oak   Brazilian Mesquite
  Maple   BirdsEye Maple   Brazilian Teak
  White Oak   Brazilian Cherry   Brazilian Koa
  Pine   Bolivian Rosewood   Purple Heart
  Natural Bamboo   Australian Cypress   Santos Mahogany
  Eastern White Pine   Strand Bamboo   Carbonized Bamboo

The investment that you make will increase the value of your home, lend comfort and warmth, and instantly add character and polish to your floors.

Estimate your Square Footage

In order to estimate how much hardwood flooring installation will cost you, apply this formula:

  1. Measure the Length and width of the area (work in inches for convenience)
  2. Multiply the length * width
  3. Add 10% to the total. This will give you room for error
  4. Divide the total by 144
  5. The answer will give you the total square footage of your room