The elegance of your Mississauga home or business depends heavily on your choice of flooring. It should not only be beautiful but easy to maintain.
To that end, many Mississauga homeowners and business owners prefer solid hardwood for its durability and beauty. At Super Choice Carpet & Hardwood, you can choose from a wide range of hardwood flooring.
But how do you know what type makes sense? Here, we look at the different types, species, grades, installation processes, and features so you can make a smart decision. Still have questions? Reach out to the team at Super Choice.
Solid hardwood cannot be installed in every spot in your Mississauga home or business. Let’s look at where it is most suitable.
You can install solid hardwood flooring in your bedroom, living room, and family room, as it enhances their beauty and durability. It also increases your property’s resale value and aesthetics, as many homeowners prefer the material’s deep warmth and natural grains.
You can effortlessly maintain hardwood floors with a simple cleaning process, such as sweeping and vacuuming. Chair movements and spills are common in dining rooms, so installing hardwood flooring protects the floor from dents and scratches, as it can be refinished multiple times. This helps maintain the space’s beauty and sophisticated look.
Many people gather in high-traffic offices and hallways for corporate events, so the floor must be durable. Solid hardwood flooring is suitable for such areas.
It is important to know about the different types of hardwood flooring available to make your choice simpler.
Strip flooring refers to narrow, linear planks under three inches wide. This format creates a sleek, traditional look, making it appear larger than the original floor area.
Hardwood boards wider than three inches are considered plank flooring. These add a spacious appearance to your floors, making them feel more comfortable and relaxing.
Hand-scrapped flooring is crafted by artisans with hand tools, creating irregular, unique textures on planks. It gives your floor a timeless, one-of-a-kind appearance that mimics an aged look. This style is well-suited to high-traffic spaces, as irregular textures can hide the scratches better.
This refers to the process of removing soft fibres from the wood’s top layer to create a textured appearance. It hides scratches well, thanks to its uneven surface, making it attractive for busy areas that might see a lot of wear.
Solid hardwood flooring is available in different grades, characters, and finishes. Let’s check these out:
Solid hardwood flooring is generally made from hickory, maple, and oak.
Hickory planks are very hard and available in strong grain variations.
Maple planks are available in both hard and smooth varieties, depending on the wood’s density and surface texture. Planks of sugar maple generally fall under the ‘hard’ variety as these are high density, making them suitable for high-traffic spaces. Planks of red, silver and bigleaf maple are of the ‘soft’ variety, making them suitable for comparatively low-traffic spaces.
Oak planks are highly durable and available in a variety of stains, including white, grey, and golden.
Solid hardwood flooring is available in different grades:
This solid hardwood has the most uniform texture and colour. Clear-grade hardwood flooring has a smooth, consistent surface with minimal variation and no knots.
This offers a more natural appearance than a clear grade. You will find a few imperfections and small variations in tone.
This grade embraces the natural, authentic appearance of wood. It has significant colour variations, more knots, and natural markings such as wormholes and mineral streaks.
When you are walking on a hardwood floor, you are making contact with the finish rather than the wood itself, so it is important to know which finishes are generally available.
Polyurethane surface finishes are generally available in two types: water-based and oil-based. Water-based polyurethanes can be applied easily, dry quickly, and maintain a smooth, shiny, clear finish.
Oil-based polyurethanes offer an amber finish that darkens the wood. It requires fewer coats and takes a little longer to dry than water-based polyurethanes.
Aluminum oxide is an industrial substance that is generally mixed with water-based or oil-based urethane to use as a wood finish. It creates a durable, scratch-resistant protective shield on hardwood.
Shellac is made from a resin secreted by the lac beetle, a native insect of India and Southeast Asia. It has no odour and dries quickly. It has strong adhesion properties due to its unique chemical composition, making it a suitable choice for finishing on pitchy woods such as pine. Shellac is easy to touch up on damaged areas of hardwood due to its quick drying and chemical properties.
It is also known as the Swedish finish, which relies on an acid catalyst mixed with the resin to trigger a fast chemical reaction. It is a slow-curing, quick-drying and durable finishing option for hardwood floors. The acid-cured finish is highly transparent, bringing out the hardwood’s natural grain patterns, making them appear remarkably crisp.
Besides choosing the right flooring, it is also important to select the appropriate installation technique to keep your solid hardwood flooring beautiful and intact for years.
Nail-down, glue-down, floating, and staple-down are some of the widely used techniques. But our flooring experts can guide you as to the best one for your hardwood floor installation in Mississauga.
As the name suggests, in this method, the flooring is directly fastened to the subfloor with nails. It does not bend or move easily, even in high-traffic spaces. Homebuyers prefer this method due to its long-lasting, highly dependable nature. This technique works best when paired with wooden subfloors.
This technique resembles the nail-down approach, except that staples are used instead of nails to hold the subfloor. It is an affordable, secure, and easy-to-install technique for hardwood flooring.
For homeowners looking for long-lasting, cost-effective, and fast flooring installation, the staple-down technique can be a smart choice. But it can lead to tension if it encounters humidity.
Solid hardwood flooring is available in different styles, wood species, grades and finishes in Mississauga stores like Super Choice. You can consider nail-down or staple-down installation methods for greater durability and longevity, but always consult the experts beforehand. At Super Choice Carpet & Hardwood, we can help make your Mississauga home or workplace more elegant and durable with our wide range of affordable solid hardwood flooring.
If you are looking for long-term durability and endurance, then solid hardwood is preferable. But if you want moisture resistance and the ability to install it at any grade, engineered hardwood is a better choice.
Solid hardwood flooring can last up to 100 years without any deterioration in its elegance or finish when properly installed and maintained.
Solid hardwood flooring is made of solid wood, and for that reason it can absolutely be refinished multiple times.
Solid hardwood flooring is generally not suitable for condos in Mississauga, as it is susceptible to moisture issues and highly sensitive to humidity swings. This moisture issue can create gaps and warping in flooring.
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