choosing the right wooden floor
for your property
Founder of En Masse Bespoke Interiors,
David Conlon, offers his advice of choosing
the right wooden floor for your property.
There are two main types of wooden floors,
solid plank floors and engineered wooden
floors. Solid wood however does work well if used
for herringbone or parquet. This method can
then be sanded and sealed and that’s your
finished floor. This is generally done once
the floor is laid which adds to the amount of
time needed to lay the floor. Smaller planks
also mean shrinkage is less likely.
Engineered wooden floors comprise of
planks of wooden flooring with a solid top
layer of wood and the engineered part is
the part it’s laminated to. This can often be
plywood or the same wood as the top layer
but cross laminated to make it more stable Engineered floors are generally prefinished,
so you can choose what finish you want,
lay the floor and it’s done with no added
sanding, or polishing. This means the time
taken to lay the floor is less, it also means
there’s less mess and labour time involved.
One of the main considerations when
choosing your wooden floor is how you plan
to heat the room? If you’re looking to install
underfloor heating an engineered wooden
floor, in most cases, not all, is the way to go. With a wooden floor of any description,
you need to allow a tolerance around
the perimeter for the floor to expand and
contract. In the past, people would lay a
floating floor on a foam membrane, but this
means the floor can bounce underfoot and
feel synthetic and unnatural.
With a solid wooden floor, it’s not
recommended to have underfloor heating
due to the timber directions which can warp
or shrink due to the heat.
An engineered wooden floor works better
with underfloor heating as it won’t shrink or
split with the heat.
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If you’re installing a wooden floor upstairs,
you can secret fix the flooring to a joist or
a substrate. Or, if chipboard, you can also
bond it to the wooden floor.
Downstairs, you can bond the wooden floor
to a concrete slab. The best way to do this
is to use a specific wooden floor adhesive
which offers elasticated adhesion. This
allows the floor to expand and contract, but
it will still feel solid underfoot.
If installing an unfinished floor, you can
engineer your desired finish using stains,
lacquers and pigmented oils. But remember
to do samples you’ll always need to do at
least two coats.
Don’t scrimp here, even though it takes time,
if the floor isn’t finished well, you’ll end up
with areas of wear which change the look
of the floor. The beauty of a wooden floor is
you can also sand them down and then re
lacquer and stain over time.
This can also be done with an engineered
floor. Meaning it’s adaptive and can be
changed with different coloured stain or
left natural for a natural grain finish once
treated. The amount of times you can
sand the floor will be less as the top layer
of wooden is thinner, but you’ll still get
a lifetime of wear out of it as long as it’s
treated.
With engineered floors, you need to check
how thick the final lamination is as to how
many times you can re-sand.