Solid vs Engineered Flooring
The difference between solid and engineered wood products is the construction of the board. Both products reveal a real wood surface on the face of the board. While all of our products are custom, our premium engineered uses lamellas that are typically 5mm thick with a plywood backing to make it just over ¾” thick. Custom thickness is available upon request. Our typical thickness of the solid wood veneer allows the floor to be refinished over time, if needed, with ample thickness of solid wood before you reach the backing.
As far as performance goes, in ideal conditions, both solid and engineered perform equally. In special situations, such as putting a wood floor over concrete, there are differences, and in this case engineered flooring is required. Be sure to discuss with us and your installer plans to level and install moisture barriers, sound barriers and subfloor as needed.
It is important to understand that the same wood is used in our engineered products as our solid products. Clients often choose, based on our recommendation, to use higher cost lumber (like rift and quartered) then maximize yield by turning what would be a single board of solid wood into roughly three boards of engineered. On the other side of the coin, since livesawn lumber is less costly, we would recommend using the solid version as paying to turn it into engineered costs more than any savings by increasing the yield from the lumber.
A typical wood floor is ¾” thick, please let us know if you need an alternate thickness. Our wall and ceiling products are also available in custom thicknesses. Whether a product is engineered, solid or reclaimed, varying thicknesses are available. All of our products are custom.
Most flooring is created with a tongue and groove on both the lengths and the ends (end matched) for installation purposes. Please discuss any exceptions with us and your installer. With patterns like herringbone and chevron, plan ahead with the tongue and groove application and hire an expert installer to be sure the pattern is properly angled and installed. Wall and ceiling material can also be made in a tongue and groove fashion. We can also provide nickel gap or “shiplap” which has a larger tongue so that a gap occurs between the boards.
Custom Lengths and widths are available since we fully customize each floor. We can also provide patterns such as Chevron, Herringbone, and Parquet.
