The Pros and Cons of Wooden Flooring

Wooden Floors are a frequent daydream of most home enthusiasts! The rich colors, the warmth under your foot and the natural sheen are sure to make heads turn. The ethereal beauty and the class are unmatched by any other style of flooring. Most old fashioned homes might have a section of their flooring, or the entire flooring of the house done up in wood, and the sale price goes up at once. These days, the easy alternative to wooden flooring is laminate, which is composite wood pressed together at high temperatures. Whether hardwood or laminate, wooden flooring is worth considering for several reasons.

1) Look: The look that a wooden floor will give to your entire room is beautiful, to say the least. It goes with any home décor accent under the sun and the beauty of the wooden floors lies in their simplicity.

2) Value: Apart from looking like a million bucks, wooden flooring will crank up the value of your house several notches if you ever plan to sell it.

3) Timelessness: With the necessary care wood floors last your house a lifetime, at the very least. Almost always, they’ll look as gorgeous as they used to when you first installed them. If worn, repairing hardwood floors will not suck the life-force out of you!

4) Easy Maintenance: Caring for hardwood floors isn’t as difficult as it looks. Clean and vacuum every so often and use a wood cleaner when you think the floors could do with a polish. Spills can be cleaned up with a clean cloth without leaving any stains. Laminate flooring is easier to clean and bears the brunt of moisture and scratching better than hardwood.

5) Versatile: Wood flooring is extremely versatile and you can do anything you want with it. Almost all décor accents complement wood flooring beautifully. you’re bored of the plain wood look, you can throw over a few fancy rugs around the floor and you’ll have a brand new look!

1) Cost: The cost involved with wood flooring is the elephant in the room. Although the timelessness and durability of hardwood flooring is too tempting to pass up, laminate flooring is almost half the price of installing hardwood, which will burn a hole in your pocket at the beginning of its life.

2) Frequent cleaning: Every so often, wood will end up getting dirty. In Indian conditions, you might have to vacuum once in every two-three days.  Also, polishing the floors with wood polish might become necessary once in a while.

3) The cold, hard floor: This won’t remain an expression in the melodrama novels anymore. The cold season will render your floors pretty chilly. Be prepared to walk around in your slippers for those few months of the year!

4) Unfriendly to Pets and Children: Pets and children will slip and fall every now and then because of the semi-slippery nature of the floors. Dogs slip more because they can’t really get a grip on the smooth floor with their padded feet.

5) Wears and Tears: Wood a way of wearing off in the high traffic areas with time. This however, can be fixed with a little sanding and polishing and will look as good as new. But, this is a luxury you can afford only with hardwood. Although laminate wears and tears slower than hardwood, it will require replacement when it does because it can’t really be repaired at one area. The same design of the laminate is almost never available at two different times, and you’ll end up ruining the entire look if you do pick up another design. Wood flooring is worth considering for what it is, rather than be rejected for what it is not. It classes up your family pad at once, and will stay with you for generations. If the idea of doing up all your floors in wood seems too overwhelming, then consider doing part of the house floors in wood. A thing of beauty is joy forever!