Understanding Timber Floors: Solid vs. Engineered timber flooring
When exploring timber flooring options, the first crucial question is: what’s the difference between solid and engineered timber flooring?
Often, decisions are made quickly based on wood type, color, width, length, and price, overlooking whether solid or engineered timber flooring is the better choice. This decision impacts the lifespan, durability, installation time, sanding and polishing frequency, design features, and sustainability of your floor.
What Is Solid Timber Flooring?
Solid timber flooring is a traditional hardwood option, consisting of a single piece of wood throughout. Common in older Australian homes, it typically arrives as a raw product, meaning it requires sanding and polishing after installation. Solid timber floors look stunning, age well, and can be re-sanded and polished multiple times, making them an excellent long-term investment.
However, many consumers aren’t aware of a key factor: solid timber flooring expands in humid conditions and contracts in dry periods. Manufacturing the perfect solid timber floorboard is an art, requiring the wood to be kiln-dried and aged to the ideal moisture level. True craftsmanship involves using a process called hysteresis to age and balance the timber, reducing movement post-installation.
If dried too much or too quickly, the wood can become brittle and lose its visual appeal. Conversely, excessive moisture can lead to expansion and contraction issues, causing boards to rise, cup, or shrink, leaving unsightly gaps.
After this meticulous treatment, solid timber boards must acclimatize to their installation environment through a process known as Equilibrium Moisture Content (EMC). When installing solid timber flooring in your home, allow the boards to sit in the installation area for up to 6 weeks to adjust to the local humidity.
For more SOLID vs ENGINEERED Timber Flooring differences click here.
Pros and Cons of Solid Timber Flooring
Pros:
- Premium look and feel
- Smooth surface with no joining edges
- Easy to clean and maintain
- Less susceptible to termites
- Ages gracefully
- Stable and solid board
- Warm and inviting for your home
- Can be sanded and polished multiple times
- Long-lasting
Cons:
- Coating isn’t as durable as pre-finished options
- Less sustainable in terms of log resource usage
- Installation can take up to 6 weeks
- Dusty and messy installation process
- Requires temporary relocation during sanding
- Shorter and random-sized boards
- Limited to narrower boards due to stability concerns
- Matching timber moisture to household EMC is challenging
- Typically nailed down
- Not suitable for pre-finished options
- Repairs and replacements necessitate a full sand and polish
- More expensive
What Is Engineered Timber Flooring?
An engineered timber floor is a multi-layered floor composed of a timber veneer or lamination surface layer sitting on a cheaper substrate of ply, pine or rubber wood.
The top layer of timber is generally thin (1mm – 4mm), making it easier to age and condition the wood, drastically reducing the expansion and contraction. Without having to worry about these humidity issues the manufacturer can create a pre-finished floorboard which doesn’t require any sanding or polishing after installation. With an engineered floor you can have the wood delivered, laid and be walking on all in the same day.
But how long will my engineered floor last?
This will depend a lot on how the floor is installed. Most companies will float an engineered floor which means they stick the boards together but there’s nothing holding the floor to the ground. This is a very quick and easy way to install a floor, but it restricts you from sanding and re-polishing the floor in the future. You can’t sand and re-polish a floating floor.
Engineered timber flooring does have some design benefits. It’s hard to find a solid timber floorboard that’s any wider than 100mm, purely because the wider and thicker the board is, the harder it is to keep it from expanding. With an engineered timber floor, you can create much wider planks exposing more of the wood’s natural textures. Wider boards will give your home an open plan look and makes it feel more spacious.
Pros and Cons of Engineered Timber Flooring
Pros
- Cheaper than solid timber
- Quick and clean installation process
- Doesn’t need to acclimatise before installation
- More stylistic variations available
Cons
- Doesn’t age gracefully
- Not as durable
- More susceptible to water and spills
- Cheaper wood underneath isn’t as strong as hardwood
- Can’t sand and polish if it’s a floated floor
- More susceptible to termites and white ants
- Typically no warranty when glued down
- Sounds cheap and hollow to walk on
What Is Lifewood Stabilised Solid Timber Flooring?
As you can see there are many pros and cons in both solid and engineered timber flooring. For this reason, we’ve created a revolutionary new board which incorporates the benefits of both.
Lifewood founder Mark first created this technology out of desperation to save his original business Bamboozle from bankruptcy. The biggest problem with bamboo flooring was finding a method to create a solid board that stays flat.
Coming from both an artistic family on his mother’s side, and a lineage of inventors and botanists from his father’s side, what really drives Mark was his passion for creating innovate solutions to complex problems. Since developing this technology for the bamboo market, Mark has extended it’s functionality for timber flooring and transformed Bamboozle into Lifewood Handcrafted Flooring to fit our extensive range of timbers.
We call this technology Stabilised Solid and it has enabled us to create a solid floorboard that can be pre-finished, sanded and polished up to 5 times and its versatility allows us to create all kinds of sizes and colour blends.
Stabilised Solid has 3 layers of solid timber (top 5mm, middle 5mm, bottom 5mm), the middle layer being the essential core layer. This core layer is lined with timber sections all laid on a right angle giving it the ability yield the natural movement of its environment, holding this movement entirely within its core.
Not only does this prevent the big issue of solid timber expanding and contracting, we have also gone to great lengths to make our board much more scratch and water resistant. All our boards have very low VOC emitting coating which we apply to all 6 sides of every board.
This means you can have a floor that looks amazing and feel at ease that it’s not going to be easily damaged.
Pros and Cons of Lifewood Stabilised Solid Timber Flooring
Pros
- Solid timber used from top to bottom making every board more stable
- Advanced manufacturing procedure eliminating expansion and contraction of the board
- All our boards come pre-finished and can be walk on the same day – no dust or mess
- Thick top layer which can be sanded and polished 4 times
- Low VOC emissions in the glue
- Sustainable manufacturing process which uses the whole tree, even the saw dust to heat the kilns
- Hard-wearing coating offering more damage protection
- Moisture resistant
- Lifetime warranty on all our floors
Cons
- More expensive than engineered
- Challenging scientific process to make and manufacture each board
- Not as readily available
We set ourselves the goal to create the most consistently superior engineered hardwood flooring available. It means searching harder for reliable and sustainable timbers and inventing our own process to achieve our uncompromising standards.
We call ourselves Lifewood because we know we can truly offer a timber floor that will be beautiful for life.
If you’re looking for a premium quality solid timber flooring solution that can be installed in just days, come and walk on our large selection of Australian timber, and French oak flooring today.
We’re located on 18 Hector Street West, Osborne Park Perth.
see our engineered timber floors here.
