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Durable hardwood floors are the perfect flooring surface for any home or business. This overview of hardwood flooring from Carlisle provides a short primer on designing, installing and caring for durable hardwood floors.What are durable hardwood floors?
Hardwood floors are a popular flooring surface for residential and commercial settings. A hardwood floor is comprised of many strips of hardwood that are affixed to a subsurface like a concrete slab or plywood. The term “hardwood” refers to wood that comes from trees like oak, walnut, hickory, birch, maple and other species that are harder than woods like cedar, pine and spruce. Hardwoods have a durability and density that enables them to maintain their strength and form for many years. Durable hardwood floors are typically coated with a sealant like polyurethane to protect them from wear, and finished hardwood flooring may be left in its natural color or stained in a variety of hues.
Carpet is the most popular alternative to hardwood when it comes to flooring surfaces, but durable hardwood floors offer many advantages over carpeted floors. Hardwood floors are:
• More durable. Hardwood floors can last many years before they require refinishing, while carpet shows its wear quickly and may need to be replaced much more often.
• Easier to care for. Durable hardwood floors are more resistant to stains and spills and are far easier to clean than carpet.
• Cleaner. Unlike carpet, hardwood floors provide no protection or hiding places for allergens like dander, pollen and other matters that reduce air quality.
• Flexible. Hardwood floors are the perfect complement to any décor.
• Acoustically pleasing. Hardwood floors provide an acoustically live and vibrant living area.
• Cost-effective. Because durable hardwood floors last for so many years, the total cost of ownership over the years is typically lower than carpet.
Wide plank flooring refers to durable hardwood floors that are made from boards with widths up to 20 inches and lengths up to 12 feet. This is much wider and longer than traditional commercial floorboards which are often no wider than 3 inches or longer than 3 feet. With Carlisle wide plank custom wood floors, the difference is significant – commercial hardwood floors have hundreds more seams than wide plank floors, producing a busier and more chaotic look that obscures the grain and personality of the wood. Wide plank flooring, on the other hand, preserves the distinctive patterns in the grain and allows the beauty and personality of the wood to emerge as a visually stunning design feature.
One of the most exciting parts of creating high quality hardwood flooring is choosing the wood that will serve as the surface for your home life or business environment. At Carlisle, each species of wood has its own personality in terms of range of hues and grain patterns
• Ash makes for highly dense and durable hardwood floors and comes in colors that range from cream to light blonde to rich nutty brown hues.
• Birch offers grain patterns that range from highly figured flames to subtle swirls, with hues that combine blonde outer edges and warm amber portions.
• Brown Maple floors are cut from the oldest part of the timber to produce a distinctive brown hardwood with subtle and consistent grain patterns.
• Cherry floors have a deep, glowing red color that will darken to a rich, burnished auburn color as the floor ages.
• Hickory has a tensile strength that rivals steel, making it one of the most durable hardwood floors available. From lighter blonde sapwood to cocoa brown and beige hardwood, Hickory can be stained to provide a subtle color palette for contemporary styles.
• Red Oak hardwood offers deep, salmon tones with exceptional widths and lengths, in boards that can be finished to be as modern or as rustic as desired.
• Walnut offers rich mocha hues and complex grain patterns that make it suitable for any setting in – from rustic country kitchens to elegant formal sitting rooms.
• White Maple delivers strikingly beautiful grain patterns reminiscent of flowing water, with clean and lighter hues that provide a more neutral finish.
• White Oak it is a versatile and dense wood with dramatic grain patterns that range from simple and sleek lines to vibrant swirls.
• Rift & Quartersawn White Oak produces strikingly beautiful and durable hardwood floors that can be finished with almost any stain color. Special cutting techniques produce straight parallel lines in the grain with vibrant ray flecks that radiate across each board.
• Reclaimed flooring salvaged from centuries-old buildings, farms and factories produces a rustic hardwood flooring with a warm, distinctive and antique look. Other flooring options include prefinished hardwood flooring, where the stain and finish are applied to the floor at the factory before being delivered to the home or business. Carlisle also offers flooring options in pine that include Eastern White Pine, Heart Pine and Hit or Miss Pine floors as well as prefinished heart pine flooring.
One of the most advantageous aspects of choosing durable hardwood floors for your home or business is the ability to customize the look and feel to match your personal aesthetic. In addition to your choice of wood, you have a wide variety of additional options that can help to make your floor uniquely yours.
These include:
• Grade of the wood. Different grades produce different aesthetics – from rustic to elegant to something more luxurious.
• Width of the board. Carlisle offers planks that range from 4 inches to 20 inches in width. Choosing the same width for each plank produces a more uniform look, while randomly sizing planks may add visual interest.
• Texture of the finish. Customized, handcrafted surface treatments can produce floors that have a rustic and timeless personality, with features like Hit or Miss and Hand-Scraped Edges that make new timber appear to be decades old.
• Color of the stain. At Carlisle, we offer a virtually unlimited assortment of color possibilities for finishing your durable hardwood floors.
• Pattern of installation. From Herringbone parquet to a Chevron or a Versailles patterns, choosing a patterned floor can provide a distinct and stunning aesthetic.
Carlisle durable hardwood floors are legendary works of art created for exceptional homes and businesses. The extraordinary quality of our wide plank floors is matched only by our dedication to providing remarkable customer service. From your first design consultation through delivery and installation of your masterpiece in wood, you’ll find our expert guidance and highly responsive service to be unmatched in the world of durable hardwood floors. Our craftsmen are true artisans with a love and feel for the wood that yields unique and stunning durable hardwood floors with every project. They painstakingly inspect every board to make sure it lives up to our standards – and to yours – and they attend to every detail to make sure your floor will impress and delight every time you walk through the door.
