Finding or building the perfect home is a complex process. A crucial but typically overlooked factor that homeowners should give more attention to is the property's flooring. Your home's flooring covers an enormous space, and significantly influences its overall look.

Flooring And Its Importance

Flooring generally refers to the permanent covering of your floor. Your flooring is undoubtedly one of your home's largest surfaces. It requires flawless installation and intensive maintenance. Without either one, it’s difficult to achieve the design or them you’re going for in your home. 

Remember, flooring is a permanent investment. Unlike carpets and rugs, you can't easily change your flooring since removal and installation costs are no joke. Therefore, think about your options carefully and choose the right flooring professionals to complete the installation process. 

Depending on your needs and preferences, you can choose from a range of flooring types including ceramic tiles, hardwood, carpets, laminates, and vinyl and linoleum. Among these flooring options, hardwood flooring, especially engineered hardwood floors, is the top choice for many homeowners. 

What Are Engineered Hardwood Floors?

Engineered hardwood floors are a special type of hardwood flooring, with enhanced features from ordinary solid hardwood. It has multiple layers of wood constructed in different directions. In this way, wood positioned on moist areas will not bow, twist, and warp as solid hardwood does. 

If you're planning to install engineered hardwood flooring in your home in Canada, visit website to hire the best flooring and installation services in your area. 

Check out the benefits you can gain from installing engineered hardwood flooring in your property:

1. Superior Moisture Prevention and Durability

Nothing can beat the moisture protection that engineered hardwood floors offer. Engineered hardwood flooring has a special layering mechanism made up of 3 to 12 layers, depending on its price point. 

The outermost layers are generally made up of a tough, urethane-like coating with a thin slice of veneer, which ensures the flooring's authenticity, attractiveness, and protection. The inner layers contain laminate materials such as high-density fiberboard, plywood, or unfinished white wood. The plywood part of the hardwood is the most dimensionally stable, preventing deformation and warping upon contact with moisture.

Moreover, typical solid wood has parallel fibers, but engineered wood fibers are laid out in a crosswise manner to enhance structural stability and its ability to hold up to moisture, thus increasing the flooring's durability.

Wooden flooring has its advantages and disadvantages. A big disadvantage of wood floors is that they're impossible install in wet or humid areas of your home. But you can install engineered hardwood flooring in your bathroom or basement, as long as the area doesn't have extreme moisture issues, and the flooring is installed seamlessly.

2. Painless Installation

While engineered hardwood is known for its moisture-retaining properties, homeowners don't need to install a separate layer for that function. Engineered hardwood flooring are easy and straightforward to install. However, you should still ask for help from the right professionals to ensure perfect installation. 

This pre-fabricated flooring option can be installed smoothly through different methods, including nailing, stapling, or the fold-and-lock technique. Despite the less difficult installation techniques needed for engineered hardwood floors, they're more expensive than ordinary hardwood. Errors during DIY installation will cost you more money to fix.

3. Various Styles, Grades, And Finishes

You'll never run out of design options with engineered hardwood flooring. This type of flooring exists in many styles, grades, and finishes to suit every homeowner's preferences.

Having different floor finishes to choose from, such as matte, semi-gloss, and high-gloss finishes, gives you freedom in styling your home. Also, flooring grades vary from the cheapest to the exotic woods. Undoubtedly, you'll find one that will best fit your budget and existing home décor. 

Some popular manufacturers of engineered hardwood flooring have a stellar lineup of products, featuring a wide range of colors, designs, and wood types. Here are a few examples:

• Old England white oak
• White oil oak
• Sand dune white oak
• Dark oil
• Vintage
• Naked oak
• Sienna white oak

Additionally, some engineered hardwood have unique surface effects that can add visual interest to your floors, like a wire-brushed appearance, hand-scraped effect mimicking a worn-out floor, and distressed patterns for a rustic appearance.

4. Aesthetic Flexibility 

Hardwood floors aren't safe from wear and tear. Along with improper maintenance and overuse in high-traffic areas, their timeless and stylish appearance can deteriorate. Fortunately, refinishing your wood flooring is an excellent and affordable way to avoid replacement. 

However, solid hardwood gets thinner with sanding and refinishing, damaging its original structure. In contrast, it would take engineered hardwood a longer time to thin out its layers. Therefore, it lasts longer and allows you to refinish in different styles. 

If you're a fan of refurbishing your wood floorings, consider high-quality engineered hardwood. Choose one that can last years of refinishing by looking at the upper layers' thickness. 

5. Easy Care And Low Maintenance 

Since engineered hardwood is great at preventing moisture and mold buildup, it'll require relatively less care and maintenance. Keep in mind that your flooring should be installed with intact moisture barriers. This will help you avoid untimely deterioration despite its moisture-blocking features.

Here are some tips to help you keep your engineered hardwood flooring in top condition:

• Ensure regular sweeping and vacuuming, particularly for high-traffic areas
• Pay attention to hard-to-reach surfaces and clean them well
• Wipe leaks and spills immediately to prevent them from leaving a mark on the wood
• Keep every area dry after cleaning 
• Eliminate objects such as harsh rugs and shoes that potentially scratch the surface

6. Environmentally-Friendly Flooring Approach

Last but not least, using engineered hardwood flooring isn't just financially and aesthetically sound choice, it’s also the more sustainable option. Compared to conventional hardwood, the veneer used in engineered hardwood is sliced, not sawed. Sawing wood creates the by-product sawdust, a huge waste of wood that could have been used for other purposes.

Furthermore, the tree woods used in creating engineered hardwood floor cores take a shorter time to grow than traditional hardwood. Typically, the poplar tree is made into engineered wood, which only takes five years to grow into a harvestable height. On the other hand, hardwood trees such as maple, oak, and mahogany require 20 to 50 years to replenish.

The Verdict 

Before installing engineered hardwood floors, it's paramount to know the costs for the materials and installation. Furthermore, although the easy installation process is enticing, it's still highly recommended to hire reliable flooring installation professionals to ensure a seamless and stress-free work.