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When you’re looking for dark hardwood floors, one of your first decisions will be whether to choose solid or engineered hardwood flooring. Both have their benefits – solid wood floors offer timeless beauty and exceptional durability, while engineered floorboards are ideal for hardwood flooring in bathrooms or for cellar flooring.
In the past, there was a clear visual and aesthetic difference between dark engineered hardwood flooring and solid flooring. But today, Carlisle’s engineered floors are virtually indistinguishable from solid wood flooring.
In this brief introduction, learn more about your options for dark engineered hardwood flooring, the benefits of engineered floorboards and what makes Carlisle’s engineered floors superior.
Explore and select from our gallery of our most popular finishes, specially categorized by the personalities and traits of the floor designs.
ExploreWith engineered hardwood flooring – or any hardwood floor for that matter – there are two ways of achieving a dark hue. You can choose a darker wood and a natural finish, or you may choose any wood and stain the floor with a dark color.
Walnut, for example, is a naturally dark wood, featuring rich mocha hues with undertones that range from yellow to purple. Cherry floors are offer a traditionally dark hue – the deep red tones in the wood can be polished to a dark, glowing auburn.
Alternately, you may choose engineered floors made with a wear layer of a wood like Ash. This hardwood is easy to stain, thanks to its lack of tannins and its clear, neutral tones. Hickory is another great option – with rich cocoa brown and beige hues, it is often chosen as an alternative to Walnut. And the nutty brown hues of White Oak are ideal for almost any stain color.
Unlike most flooring companies that offer a limited range of stains, Carlisle provides a virtually unlimited assortment of colors for your dark engineered hardwood flooring. Our Carlisle Custom Color matching system makes it easy to reproduce a stain color from virtually any item you bring in or send to us – a piece of fabric, a paint chip, a bit of tile or a swatch of linen, for example. With Carlisle, you’ll never have to settle for color that is “almost right.”
Engineered hardwood flooring uses floorboards that are made with multiple layers of a backing material and a top layer, or wear layer, of solid hardwood. Each of the layers, or plies, are glued together to form a highly stable core that's more impervious to changes in temperature and humidity. Engineered hardwood flooring is typically installed in basements and other locations below grade, or over radiant heat or concrete slab – anywhere that the conditions would normally cause a solid hardwood floor to warp or crack.
Dark engineered hardwood flooring is an engineered floor with a wear layer of a naturally dark hardwood like Walnut or Cherry. Alternately, you can choose another hardwood option like Ash or Birch engineered flooring and stain the wood to a dark color.
Unfinished engineered flooring is an engineered floor with a wear layer of unfinished hardwood. Like other forms of unfinished flooring, unfinished engineered floors are meant to be sanded, stained and sealed on site after installation.
Yes. A prefinished floor is one that is finished before it is shipped to your location. Prefinishing your dark engineered hardwood flooring lets us sand the floorboards, stain the wood and apply the sealants in the ideal conditions of our manufacturing facility. We combine time-honored techniques with modern technology and our Carlisle Custom Coat™ prefinishing solution to give every board a deep hand-rubbed appearance.
Absolutely. Engineered floors can be installed in any type of pattern that you'd find with a solid wood floor. At Carlisle, for example, we offer two collections of engineered Herringbone flooring that are perfect for installation in industrial flats, penthouse lofts and other locations where engineered flooring is preferred.
Manufactured hardwood floors are the same as engineered floors.
Carlisle has been a leader in handcrafted wood flooring for more than 50 years. Today, our engineered hardwood flooring is among the best in the industry as well, made with a more stable core and a thicker wear layer that adds years to each floor’s longevity.
Every Carlisle solid wood or engineered floor is a masterpiece that is truly an expression of your sense of style and beauty. We craft every floor to your exact specifications, attending to every detail to make sure we exceed your expectations for your Carlisle floor. Our artisan woodworkers fashion each wide plank with pride, passion and purpose – we know that the surface we are creating will become the defining feature of your home for years to come.
