Hardwood Flooring 101 with Glen Peloso

Designer Glen Peloso, National Design Editor for Canadian Home Trends Magazine, answers four common questions about hardwood flooring.

Can you put hardwood flooring in your kitchen?

Yes! The actual surface of the hardwood is just fine with a little bit of water. You don’t want to leave it wet for a very long time because the sides of the boards will absorb water if it’s left sitting there, but in terms of spills, the surface of the hardwood is very durable and can deal with that.

Solid hardwood flooring, 3/4-inch hardwood flooring or engineered hardwood?

One advantage of solid hardwood flooring is that you can refinish this floor a number of times. You can also do something called an engineered floor. This product is actually a far superior product than the actual 3/4″ hardwood floor, because it is far more stable in our environment. We have humidity conditions that go from very warm and very humid to very dry, and that’s not great for hardwood flooring. With engineered flooring, the plywood base keeps the floor solid and steady all the way through.

What kind of wood should you use?

Every kind of wood has a different kind of hardness to it. For instance, if you choose something like bamboo flooring, it’s about 150 times as hard as oak. Other floorings are softer, like walnut, which is a less forgiving wood for a few reasons; one reason being that walnut can be easily bleached by the sun.

You want to choose a wood with more graining, as the graining tends to hide dirt and blemishes on the wood. Maple, for instance, is a wood that has very little graining.

What are some alternative materials you can use to get the look of hardwood?

An alternative to hardwood flooring is vinyl. Vinyl is a versatile material that can withstand wet environments and is great for the floor in a basement. Laminate flooring is another alternative to hardwood, and as a plus, it looks similar to real wood. Laminate is highly durable and a little more cost-effective. Finally, you can now get all kinds of hardwoods in the form of ceramic tiles, which are great in wet or dry conditions. Use them in the mudroom or in the front room.

One more tip from Glen: Ideally, you want to be able to run the same product through the whole house. This will give you a really open, warm, cohesive feel to the whole house.