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You have questions, we have answers. Explore the most frequently asked questions about hardwood wood flooring below. Need assistance or want to know more? Contact Carlisle or call 800-595-9663 today to get all your inquiries answered.
When choosing hardwood floors, you’ll likely get a lot of advice about color. Some people strongly prefer the benefits of dark hardwood floors while others swear by the advantages of lighter flooring colors. Here’s a brief guide to installing dark or light floors in your home and the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Dark hardwood floors have been trending for a number of years. From Heart Pine floors in an older home that have aged to a rich brown patina or brand-new floors in an urban setting that have been darkened with a stain, dark wood floors are a highly popular choice. While dark floors tend to have a formal appearance, darker colors can also be an excellent choice for a more rustic feel. To create a dark wood floor, you can choose a naturally dark wood species like American Walnut flooring or you can use a darker stain on a lighter species like Ash or Brown Maple.
Light hardwood floors add spaciousness and flexibility to any room and are especially suited to contemporary design styles. You can achieve a light hardwood floor by choosing a light-colored wood species such as Ash, Birch or Maple. Alternately, you can make a hardwood floor lighter by applying a light-colored stain or whitewash.
Explore and select from our gallery of our most popular finishes, specially categorized by the personalities and traits of the floor designs.
ExploreDark hardwood floors bring warmth and rich contrasts to a room, especially rooms with lighter-colored furnishings. Because dark floors are popular today, they may increase the resale value of the home. Dark floors can complement many different styles of decor and add a sense of elegance to a room. Over time, dark hardwood floors are less likely to fade than lighter floors, making them a great choice for rooms with lots of natural light. If using a stain to create the darker tone, it will cover up more of the underlying wood variation and create a more homogenous color palette.
Dark hardwood floor colors can make a small room feel even smaller, and in rooms with a lot of dark woodwork, a dark floor may feel overwhelming. Dark floors also show dust and debris more easily and may require more frequent sweeping and cleaning.
Light wood floors make spaces feel larger and can brighten rooms without a much natural light or with a lot of darker furniture. With a neutral color palette, lighter floors can easily accommodate a wide range of interior design choices. Light colors will also hide dust, dirt and debris more easily than darker floors.
In rooms with light-colored walls or lots of natural light, floors that are too light may “wash out” the room. Lighter hardwood floors may fade faster than darker floors. Lighter floors will also show more of the underlying color variation in the wood, creating a less homogeneous tone across the floor.
Wide plank floors are made with floorboards that are much wider and longer than standard commercial flooring. While a typical commercial floorboard may be only 3” wide and 4’ to 6’ in length, wide plank floorboards may be 5” to 20” wide and 12’ to 16’ long. The extra width and length mean fewer seams in the floor, creating a sense of spaciousness and a surface that is less “busy.” Wide plank floors also allow the personality of the wood and its grain to be fully revealed. Wide plank floorboards can be fashioned from many different kinds of light and dark hardwood species or stained to have a light or dark appearance.
Luxury wood flooring is a surface with solid wood or engineered floorboards that is fashioned with greater care, finer materials and an emphasis on design. Often, the dimensions of the planks are wider and longer given the higher quality raw materials used in the process. Home and business owners often choose luxury wood flooring to add distinctiveness and beauty to a space.
Hardwood floors are a plus for prospective homebuyers and can add up to 2.5% to the sale price, according to Realtor.com.[1]
Wide plank floorboards tend to be more expensive than standard commercial flooring, as the unique raw material is rarer and the attention to the production process required to maximize the beauty and stability in such a plank creates a higher production cost than mass-produced commodity flooring.
With fewer seams in the floor, wide plank floors will make a room seem larger.
At Carlisle Wide Plank Floors, we offer hardwood flooring made from both dark and light hardwood species, including Ash, Birch, Brown Maple, Cherry, Hickory, Red Oak, Walnut, White Maple and White Oak. Our Pine floors include Eastern White Pine, Heart Pine and Hit or Miss Pine. Additionally, we offer a variety of floors made from reclaimed wood that feature a warm, dark patina that only time and generations of foot traffic can achieve. We also offer a virtually unlimited choice of stain colors, and our Carlisle Custom Color match system can easily provide a fast color match for virtually any item.
