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You have questions, we have answers. Explore the most frequently asked questions about Red Oak wood flooring below. Need assistance or want to know more? Contact Carlisle or call 800-595-9663 today to get all your inquiries answered.
Red Oak floors are one of the most popular options for hardwood flooring. The salmon-toned hues of Red Oak floorboards add warmth to any room, and the Red Oak species offers an ideal balance of beauty, affordability and durability. Harder than Walnut and Cherry but softer than Hickory and Maple, Red Oak floors are easy to work with and offer excellent resistance to wear and tear.
Red Oak is a beautiful hardwood with natural salmon-pink hues that add warmth to any room. Oak is porous hardwood that absorbs stains easily and can be refinished multiple times. The wood is highly workable, making installation quicker and less costly. Highly abundant, Red Oak is among the most affordable options for hardwood as well. The only real drawback of a Red Oak floor is its popularity and ubiquity – homeowners looking for more unique options may be drawn to other types of hardwoods.
Red Oak timbers have a light brown color with salmon-pinkish hues and strong, varied grain patterns that add warmth, beauty and visual interest to the room.
Explore and select from our gallery of our most popular finishes, specially categorized by the personalities and traits of the floor designs.
ExploreNaturally finished Red Oak floors are likely to darken to an amber or golden brown color with time and prolonged exposure to sunlight. This aging process may be less noticeable in darker stained floors.
Wide plank Red Oak hardwood flooring is made with floorboards that are between 5” and 12” wide and up to 14’ long. Compared to a floor with standard commercial floorboards that are 2¼” to 3” wide and 4’ long, a wide plank Red Oak floor will have a much more spacious and less busy look. Wide plank floors also allow the beauty of the wood and the personality of the grain to be fully revealed in each plank.
Solid Red Oak flooring has a Janka hardness rating of 1290 – harder than Walnut and Cherry but softer than Hickory and Maple. While harder floors may offer more resistance to dents and scratches, the prominent grain of a Red Oak floor will camouflage wear more easily.
Because Oak is a porous wood, unfinished Red Oak flooring can be easily stained in a wide range of colors.
Red Oak is among the most affordable hardwood flooring options. The timber is widely available and easy to source, making it a sustainable option as well.
Sweeping and vacuuming your Red Oak floors regularly will help to keep them clean and remove debris that could cause scratches. For deeper cleaning, try a mixture of a few ounces of vinegar with a couple of gallons of water. This solution is safe for both your Red Oak floors and the environment.
Prefinished Red Oak floors are made with boards that have been sanded, stained and sealed at the manufacturer’s facility before they are shipped to a job site for installation. Prefinishing a floor enables manufacturers to apply stronger sealants to protect the wood than can be used within the home. Prefinished floors can be installed more quickly than floors finished on site, and they allow the customer to avoid the smell, mess and inconvenience of having a floor sanded and sealed within the home.
Engineered Oak hardwood flooring uses floorboards that are made with a veneer of Red Oak that is glued to 5 to 11 layers of backing material like plywood or Baltic Birch. This multi-layered construction makes for a very solid core that performs better in locations with high levels of humidity and moisture. Engineered floors are typically recommended for installation in basements and other locations below grade, as well as on radiant heating systems and concrete slabs.
Red Oak is an excellent choice for a parquet or patterned floor. Common patterns include Herringbone and Chevron, which create zigzag patterns on the floor. The Versailles pattern, named after the famous French palace, uses geometric shapes to create a three-dimensional, interwoven pattern.
Texturing a Red Oak floor gives new floorboards the appearance of planks that have been lived on for generations and worn down by time and foot traffic. A textured floor may re-create the saw marks that were once commonly seen on boards prepared at old sawmills. Craftsmen can also texture floors with hand-scraping techniques or wire brushes that gently wear away the grain to give the wood an aged appearance.
Reclaimed Oak floors are made with boards salvaged from old barns, factories and other buildings designated for demolition. The floorboards retain all the imperfections and character of the original wood that has been worn down by centuries of foot traffic and exposure to weather. The nail holes, wormholes, splits, cracks and saw marks on a reclaimed Oak floorboard add instant authenticity and personality to a floor.
Red Oak is lighter and has more pinkish tones than White Oak, which has a darker appearance with more brown and yellow hues. White Oak is slightly harder and has denser grain, enabling it to resist scratches and dents more easily than Red Oak.
Grown in France, French Oak trees have hues of nutty brown and warm amber, resembling White Oak timbers more than Red Oak. French Oak has a Janka hardness rating of 1360, making it somewhat denser than Red Oak which has a rating of 1290.
At Carlisle Wide Plank Floors, we offer a wide array of Oak flooring options as well as floors in a variety of other hardwoods, pines and reclaimed timbers. Our expert design consultants work closely with customers to customize Oak floors with a broad range of options for grades, stain colors and texture. With Carlisle, it’s easy to craft a one-of-a-kind Red Oak floor that will grace your home for generations.
