Is Wooden Flooring Right For You?



Posted: Saturday, December 26, 2009

by Anthony Davis

Wooden flooring is one of those things that has been improved upon in so many ways over the decades that it may as well be considered new. There are many advantages to having wooden floors installed in your home, but you certainly won't realize them unless you consider a wooden floor in the first place. Many people immediately dismiss this type of flooring due to the many common misconceptions surrounding it. Let's take a look at some of these old ideas, and see how the facts have changed.

Wooden Flooring Is Not Hard To Maintain

Wooden floors may have been hard to maintain in the past, but not any longer. Newer wooden flooring by high quality manufacturers is made for refinishing, but it's rarely necessary. When it comes down to it, even cheap wood floors are easily kept looking good by using area rugs and floor protectors underneath furniture. The only enemy of the wooden floor that's not fully controllable is moisture.

Wooden Flooring Is Not Terribly Expensive

Like all things quality in life, wooden floors are certainly capable of being expensive. They are certainly not, by default, the most expensive floors, however. As they come directly from natural sources, unlike many other floors, the area that you live in can have the largest impact on the pricing of anything wood. There's also some aesthetic considerations with real wood that aren't really an issue with most flooring types. If you find that wooden floors seem to be priced rather high, make sure you are comparing like products. Beware of accidentally comparing completely different quality floors.

Wooden Flooring Is Bad For The Environment

One of the largest, most well known myths about wooden floors also happens to be the least true. Everyone knows that we get wood from cutting down trees, and we know that, recently, trees are disappearing like crazy. This is what we're told, anyway, both by the media, and by our own eyes when we see large areas cleared for development. However, the reality is, there was actually quite a bit less living, standing timber half a century ago! This is the result of forests which are grown for timber, and careful management. There is no other flooring that comes straight from resources that are simply regrown from the ground.

Wooden Flooring Is Bad For Allergies

It seems that any time you go from a home with carpet to a home with wooden flooring, you're assaulted by dust and pet dander, if there are pets. Ironically, this is more a sign that the floors are healthier for you, even if you're an allergy sufferer. You see, just about anything that could possibly be in the air can also be trapped in carpet. This includes mold, dust mites, and toxins from all of the various chemicals that we encounter in our day to day lives. Once wooden flooring is swept and vacuumed, most of that is gone. The simple fact of the matter is, wooden flooring is nearly impervious to contamination of any kind, something that other floors definitely cannot claim.

For more information about wooden flooring, check out Wooden Flooring Info.

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