What Does Real Wood Flooring Mean?

Real wood flooring refers to flooring which is made from either solid or engineered wood.  Solid wood flooring, as the name suggests is made up of single planks of solid wood whereas engineered flooring is made up of a thin layer of solid wood on top of a plywood base.

Solid wood flooring comes in a whole range of colours, sizes, dimensions and styles of solid planks, all made from single pieces of timber.  A flooring solution historically laid over wooden support beams, solid wood floors nowadays are more often than not chosen for their appearance and authenticity.

Because solid wood flooring is made from a single piece of timber, there are limitations in terms of it’s length and thickness, which isn’t the case with engineered wood flooring.  Also, by its very nature, they expands and contracts more than engineered wood flooring as a result of temperature and moisture fluctuations causing slight ongoing changes to it’s look and form.

Engineered wood flooring is, as we’ve already mentioned, made up of at least two layers of wood which is formed to make a plank on to which a top layer (called the lamella) is stuck to give the boards their natural look.

Both of these real wood flooring options have their own characteristics and their own pros and cons.  After fitting, solid wood flooring for example is slightly more likely to have gaps between the boards than engineered wood flooring.  But on the positive side, generally speaking, it’s possible to sand solid flooring more often than you can engineered.  Also, because of it’s construction, engineered flooring comes in longer and wider board sizes than solid wood planks making it suitable for bigger rooms.

Notwithstanding their differences, both solid wood and engineered flooring are what we’d term real wood flooring.  It’s really important to stress before we close that we’re not on about laminated flooring in either of these instances.  Laminated flooring is a totally different product which is made up of high density fibreboard with a film stuck on the top which is made to look like wood.