Solid Wood VS Engineered Wood

Wood flooring.

Most people in the Midwest seem to think that solid hardwood is better than engineered hardwood. Why is that? Engineered wood flooring has been the preferred wood flooring on both coasts. The right coast and the left coast have been buying engineered for a long time now. Throughout my 37 years in the flooring business I've almost exclusively sold solid hardwood. Just about every job is solid. But is it better? Now that's the question......

Of course there are always pros and cons to every product and some products work better in certain situations.

Solid hardwood is of course solid wood. One big chunk of oak or maple or hickory or whatever species of wood you would prefer milled to a certain width and length (almost always 3/4" thick). People think a solid chunk of wood would be better than engineered which is a number of ply of wood glued and compressed together. Well, engineered wood is also an all wood floor, just not one big chunk of wood.

They make engineered wood flooring with anywhere from 3 to 7 ply (sometimes more). Each layer has the grain turned 90 degrees. This gives engineered wood unrivaled stability compared to solid wood. This is probably the biggest asset for engineered wood flooring (stability is the attribute where wood will expand and contract with differing humidity levels. Like during the winter when the furnace is running all the time your solid wood flooring will shrink as it loses moisture. This will cause gaps in your floor between planks especially in the wider planks. In the summer when the humidity returns your wood will expand and close those gaps. Engineered wood because of the way it is constructed will not have this problem). You can install engineered wood flooring below grade on a concrete floor (you can't do this with solid wood unless you first add a plywood base floor over the cement which will greatly increase the expense of the overall job). Plus, the higher humidity levels you will encounter below grade may wreak havoc with a solid wood floor, especially with wider planks.

So below grade and/or on a cement substrate, engineered wood flooring is the way to go. Above grade you can easily use either option.

Also, engineered flooring is considered a "green" product because you are using much less of the featured hardwood (such as maple) in the final product. The top layer will be maple whereas the other ply will feature a softer wood such as spruce. This saves on the number of premium trees that have to be cut down to make a maple floor. Which is good, isn't it?  No problem cutting down them spruce trees......lol. Way to many of them around anyways......JK



Jeff Dean
Dover Floor Covering
http://www.doverfloorcovering.com