If you’re considering wood flooring for your bathrooms, you’ll be aware that the big problem with wood flooring in bathrooms is humidity. If it wasn’t for humidity, installing wood flooring in your bathrooms would be no problem at all. That said, if you make the right choices and take the right precautions, wood flooring for bathrooms can be a great option.
If you decide that you want to install wood flooring in your bathroom or bathrooms, we’d recommend that you install engineered wood flooring and not solid wood flooring. Solid wood flooring, as the name suggests is made from one single plank of wood whereas engineered flooring is made up of a thin layer of real wood secured on top of a plywood base. Because of the structure of engineered wood flooring, it is better able to withstand the humidity you’ll experience in bathrooms.
When it comes to the thickness of the engineered wood flooring you choose for your bathrooms, you should plump for a maximum 14 or 15 mm thick board. The reason for this is because at this thickness, the flooring is very flexible and therefore more stable.
Once your wood floor is laid in your bathroom, you need to think about wood flooring finish. There are two options: one is lacquer and the other is hard wax oil. Lacquer will make the wood flooring in your bathroom pretty much waterproof and will help cut down your maintenance requirements. This is because lacquer effectively creates a protective coating over the wood making it resistant to damage and moisture.
Lacquers are man-made and typically come in Satin or Matt finish and which you choose depends entirely on your own personal preference. Satin lacquer typically has a bit of a shine to it and matt, as the name suggests, doesn’t. The advantage of matt lacquer over satin is that it allows the wood to retain its natural look.
Hard wax oil on the other hand is a natural product which you can apply to help protect your bathroom wood flooring from moisture damage. Hard wood oil penetrates deeply into the wood affording a great level of protection from moisture, dirt and damage as well as being kind to the environment.
So once you’ve chosen the right flooring and the right finish, the last piece of advice we’d give if you’re thinking of having wood flooring installed in your bathrooms is to be sure to respect the 20 mm gap between the planks and the walls when fitting. This expansion gap, as it’s known, allows the wood to expand and contract without restriction as moisture levels change. Don’t worry about how this will look as it’s most likely that the gap will be hidden with skirting boards.