Costco Connection - July 2012

for your home

With minimal maintenance, hardwood, bamboo and laminate floorings can add color and warmth to a room.

Floor plan

hardwoods. Technology has made designs better than ever—choose anything from a whitewashed wood look to a natural limestone look.

Cons: Laminate cannot be refinished like wood; once it’s worn or damaged it will need to be replaced. Laminate doesn’t have as good a resale value in the home as wood.

Choosing the right floor—be it hardwood,
bamboo or laminate—for your home

By Gretchen Roberts

OF ALL THE ELEMENTS that make up a room, floors work the hardest, bearing traffic, spills and the weight of the furniture. Aesthetically, floors can bring a room to life, adding color, tone, texture, warmth and style. Flooring comes in so many types and styles that it can be harder to choose than to actually install it. So where to start? Consider these factors when selecting a wood or wood laminate floor.

Cost: Take both the short- and long-term price tag into account when choosing a floor. Bamboo and hardwood flooring cost more than laminate, but they can last for many years and increase the value of your home. Houses with wood flooring tend to sell faster and for higher prices than those without wood floors.

Maintenance: Laminate floors require no special maintenance; hardwood and bamboo need occasional refinishing. All are easy to clean and keep clean.

Durability: Hardwood floors are generally very durable and can last for years if maintained properly.

Ease of installation: Laminate is easier to install than wood, but experts generally recommend using a professional installer for most types of flooring unless you’re willing to assess your level of expertise and do your homework first.

Location: Form often follows function
in flooring: You wouldn’t want a deep pile
carpet in the dining room, for instance, and
a wood floor with some give would work
better in the kitchen than a stone floor, which
is hard on the feet and dropped objects.
If you’re flowing a new floor into an existing
floor, the floor height and color must be
taken into consideration.

PHOTODISC/RF

Bamboo

Pros: Bamboo is a tough material and comes in many different stains, from its naturally light color to a darker finish, giving homes a contemporary, elegant look. Bamboo is classified as a hardwood, although it’s actually a tough grass. To make floors, bamboo is harvested and cut into strips, which are glued to engineered boards, or mixed with resin and pressed into extremely dense blocks, which are then sawn into boards. This second method creates flooring that is comparable to the hardest hardwood flooring available. Bamboo is the most environmentally friendly

Hardwood

Pros: Elegant, beautiful hardwood floors are available in a wide variety of species, colors and finishes. Wood floors are good insulators, helping to keep heat or cooled air inside the house, and have more give underfoot than a harder material such as concrete or tile. Solid hardwood floors can be sanded and refinished multiple times, and they stand the test of time in homes several centuries old. Engineered wood floors, which are made with a thin layer of real wood on top glued to a layer of engineered board underneath, can be installed in a basement area below the grade of the house.

Cons: Solid wood floors can’t be installed below grade, because solid wood can’t be nailed to a concrete subfloor. Engineered wood floors usually can’t be sanded and refinished as many times as solid wood floors, since the veneer, or top layer, is thinner.

COURTESY OF J.SONIC SERVICES

More on floors:

; National Wood Flooring Association, www.woodfloors.org

; North American Laminate Flooring Association, www.nalfa.com

; Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association, www.nofma.org

Laminate

Pros: Laminate is economical, one of the
easiest types of flooring to install, extremely
durable and environmentally friendly, since
it’s made from paper rather than old-growth
hardwood floor, since it’s a natural, renewable
resource. Because bamboo is grown in a tropi-
cal region, it’s naturally moisture resistant.