Engineered Oak, Ash or Walnut! What Wood to Choose For Your Flooring?
For flooring, you may opt for wood, tile, marble or even concrete depending on your choice of texture, color and also the amount of time you’re willing to spend on maintaining the quality of the flooring. If you have opted for wood, you’ve opted for the most environmentally friendly, easy to care for and economical material for your flooring. If you have chosen engineered wood flooring, you have most obviously kept in mind its versatility and resilience. The next step for you is to choose among almost 50 species of wood flooring. For your convenience, we’ll list down three of the most available domestic wood species and compare them in respect of durability, color and grain patterns.
Durability: For comparing strength and hardness, we’ll refer to the Janka Scale. It is used to indicate how hard a plank of wood is. It was designed to measure the embedding force while trying to embed half diameter of a 0.444-inch ball into any certain species of wood. According to the Janka scale, the hardest wood among the three is walnut wood flooring with a reading of 3680. Next come White Oak and Tasmanian Oak with a reading of 1360 and 1350 respectively. The softest one is Engineered Ash wood flooring with a reading of 1320. So, it is entirely up to your lifestyle and the traffic in your house that will lead you to choose among these woods. If you are a single person who throws fewer parties or a retired couple, ash wood and oak wood can be on your list of choices. But if you are a young couple with kids and pets, it is better for you to choose walnut. Although exotic, it will provide you with the longer serving period than the softer hardwoods.
Color: This is entirely dependent on your choice and the furniture you own. Among white oak, heartwood is light brown with a few cases of a pinkish tint or a visible grayish cast whereas sapwood is in between white and cream. This light nature of white oak gives the room an airy feeling and also is the contemporary trend. Red oak is a little more reddish than white oak and often falls behind white oak for this very reason. Walnut can be a rich dark brown or even white to tan. This is a positive when you are looking for a gorgeous and contemporary flooring. With proper finishing, it can also double as a glamour vintage flooring. Ash wood is usually creamy white to yellow. If you are going for a neutral and classy look, Ash wood’s color may be just the right one for you. So lining up from lightest to darkest we get, Ash wood flooring, engineered Oak wood flooring and Walnut wood flooring.
Grain: Oak and walnut have very open grain, that is, they have visibly larger pores. Ash has bold, moderately open and straight grains. Oak has swirls and blurs and occasionally flake patterns called tiger rays or butterflies. Ash has wavy figuring. Walnut is mostly straight with smaller pores. So, regarding grains, it is entirely up to you to choose among the many designs and texture.
For flooring, you may opt for wood, tile, marble or even concrete depending on your choice of texture, color and also the amount of time you’re willing to spend on maintaining the quality of the flooring. If you have opted for wood, you’ve opted for the most environmentally friendly, easy to care for and economical material for your flooring. If you have chosen engineered wood flooring, you have most obviously kept in mind its versatility and resilience. The next step for you is to choose among almost 50 species of wood flooring. For your convenience, we’ll list down three of the most available domestic wood species and compare them in respect of durability, color and grain patterns.
Durability: For comparing strength and hardness, we’ll refer to the Janka Scale. It is used to indicate how hard a plank of wood is. It was designed to measure the embedding force while trying to embed half diameter of a 0.444-inch ball into any certain species of wood. According to the Janka scale, the hardest wood among the three is walnut wood flooring with a reading of 3680. Next come White Oak and Tasmanian Oak with a reading of 1360 and 1350 respectively. The softest one is Engineered Ash wood flooring with a reading of 1320. So, it is entirely up to your lifestyle and the traffic in your house that will lead you to choose among these woods. If you are a single person who throws fewer parties or a retired couple, ash wood and oak wood can be on your list of choices. But if you are a young couple with kids and pets, it is better for you to choose walnut. Although exotic, it will provide you with the longer serving period than the softer hardwoods.
Color: This is entirely dependent on your choice and the furniture you own. Among white oak, heartwood is light brown with a few cases of a pinkish tint or a visible grayish cast whereas sapwood is in between white and cream. This light nature of white oak gives the room an airy feeling and also is the contemporary trend. Red oak is a little more reddish than white oak and often falls behind white oak for this very reason. Walnut can be a rich dark brown or even white to tan. This is a positive when you are looking for a gorgeous and contemporary flooring. With proper finishing, it can also double as a glamour vintage flooring. Ash wood is usually creamy white to yellow. If you are going for a neutral and classy look, Ash wood’s color may be just the right one for you. So lining up from lightest to darkest we get, Ash wood flooring, engineered Oak wood flooring and Walnut wood flooring.
Grain: Oak and walnut have very open grain, that is, they have visibly larger pores. Ash has bold, moderately open and straight grains. Oak has swirls and blurs and occasionally flake patterns called tiger rays or butterflies. Ash has wavy figuring. Walnut is mostly straight with smaller pores. So, regarding grains, it is entirely up to you to choose among the many designs and texture.