Why Wood Floors?
- Durable
- Beautiful
- Affordable
- Easy Maintenance
- Increase Value of your home
- Ecological (renewable and recyclable)
- Healthy Home, no allergens
There are as many types of wood as there are types of trees, each with characteristic grain, hardness and color. Here’s a short list of the most common types of wood used for floors or furniture.
| Red Oak By far, red oak is the most popular flooring option, with warm pink tones and a rich, grainy appearance which works well with most stains. |
| White Oak White oak is harder than red oak, is naturally a wheat-like yellow color, and has a lovely grain of warm medullar rays. |
| Pine A traditional flooring wood famous for its traditional and cozy warmth, pine flooring is found in numerous historical homes. Pine is a soft wood, and given to showing ‘dent’ marks after prolonged use under heavy furniture. For this reason, pine floors are a popular choice with new home builders who want a floor with hand-distressed, or ‘rustic’ details. |
| Maple A clean-looking hardwood, less textured than oak, offering a uniform appearance with exceedingly fine graining. Maple is an extremely popular wood for home flooring. |
| Cherry A beautiful pink-toned wood which takes on a deep warm hue when finished with urethane. Cherry wood is softer than oak, and more expensive. |
| Hickory An extremely hard wood, very durable, which comes in both white and red varietals. |
| Basswood Also called linden wood, basswood is a common soft wood with indistinct grains and a creamy base color. |
| Bamboo Newly popular, this Asian grass is gaining popularity as a flooring. It comes in various shades of tan, shows distinctive grain from the stalks. While bamboo takes stains well, it usually comes factory-finished. |
| Pecan A durable and hard wood with a fine, distinctive grain. |
| Birch One of the softer hardwoods, with close grains and varieties of tone from whiteish-yellow to a light brown. Birch is often mistaken for maple. |
| Walnut Like Cherry, Walnut is extremely durable and dent-resistant, with a medium color and a whorled grain pattern. Walnut is one of the more expensive hardwoods. |
| Teak An extremely durable and warm imported wood, Teak is usually used for out of doors applications because of its innate oiliness. |
From top to bottom, this list rates the hardest to the softest wood types from 1- 21, with 21 being the hardest and most durable wood, and 1 being the softest.
| Brazilian Cherry | 21 |
| Mesquite | 20 |
| Santos Mahogany | 19 |
| Merbau | 18 |
| Jarrah | 17 |
| Purpleheart | 16 |
| Hickory/Pecan | 15 |
| African Pecan | 14 |
| Wenge | 13 |
| Bamboo | 12 |
| Hard Maple | 12 |
| Australian Cypress | 11 |
| White Oak | 10 |
| Ash | 9 |
| American Beach | 8 |
| Red Oak (Northern) | 7 |
| Yellow Birch | 6 |
| Heart Pine | 5 |
| Black Walnut | 4 |
| Teak | 3 |
| Black Cherry | 2 |
| Douglas Fir | 1 |