Oak is a wood that’s rarely ‘off trend’, but right now, it’s extremely popular. A wood that’s known for its strength and durability, oak is an extremely stylish flooring option. Available either in solid or engineered wood flooring options, there’s a whole range of oak grades, colours, styles and finishes you can choose to create the contemporary look you’re seeking in your home. In this article, we’ll look at a range of modern oak flooring solutions.
Irrespective of the fact that you’re looking for a highly contemporary, modern oak floor, it’s important that you make the right fundamental decisions about which flooring option will work best for you.
Whether you plump for solid oak flooring or engineered oak flooring will depend on the environmental conditions in your room and whether or not you have under floor heating. If you’re fitting your floor in a contemporary room that has significant temperature or moisture fluctuations or has under floor heating, then engineered wood flooring should be your choice. If neither of these situations apply, then you’ll be left free to choose between solid or engineered wood flooring.
Both solid and engineered wood flooring come in a range of widths from really narrow to really wide. How extreme you decide to go in terms of widths will depend on the dimensions of your room as well as the look you’re trying to create. That said, wide planks are really in vogue right now and never fail to create a modern and contemporary look. The wider you go, the fewer joins you have in the floor (where the boards butt up against each other) and this join-free look creates a really clean, stylish looking, up to date effect.
Even though it’s a kind of contradiction in terms, reclaimed wood flooring is really in demand right now to compliment contemporary room settings. Authentic, old reclaimed wood flooring can be a real bind to track down, so a hand aged or distressed new floor is often the best option. Such oak floors are commonly found now in both engineered and solid options, so you shouldn’t struggle to track down what you’re looking for.
Flooring most commonly comes with either fully or slightly beveled edges. What this means is that the edges of the board have been cut into a very slight ‘v’ shape. This is highly common and can look great. The alternative to beveled edge boards is square-edged boards.
Square-edged boards are cut to a perfect 90-degree angle and butt perfectly up against each other to create an apparently seamless and clean overall look. They are frequently used in contemporary settings because of the cleanness of the finished result. Having said all of that, square-edged boards are more tricky to fit, so if you’re choosing this option, do make sure you prepare your subfloor well and lay your boards to perfection. Or of course you could always get the pros in!
Herringbone oak flooring, although having its roots back in the grand houses and chateaux across Europe, is currently a very ‘on trend’ wood flooring option. A look that lends itself perfectly to cutting edge design furnishing and colours, it creates the perfect old/new blend of interior that so many people are trying to recreate. A dark herringbone oak floor looks really stunning with white walls and exposed stone or cast iron beam work to create a loft feeling.
If you fancy going completely mad on your contemporary interior, there’s no one who should try to stop you! Combining floors of different widths in either random or planned ways in your room can create some really stunning effects. No matter whether you’re wanting to create something really original or something more traditional but with a twist, you can with modern oak flooring. You could even combine a black stained oak floor board with a white oak floor board to create a brave interior with a real impact!
If you’d like to chat about how to achieve a really modern look using oak, or any other wood flooring option, why not get in touch? At Wood and Beyond we’ve got tons of ideas and would love to share them with you.
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