What is the Difference Between Engineered Wood & Solid Wood Flooring?

In the high end homes and commercial market, in terms of indoor wood floor, architects & local designers would usually go for engineered wood flooring or solid wood plank flooring. Engineered wood flooring is one of the smartest inventions today that make real wood flooring a cost efficient kind of wood. An understanding between engineered and solid wood therefore will be good for the home owner.

Pre Finished Products 

Engineered wood flooring are pre-finished products unlike solid wood planks flooring. The engineered wood flooring therefore has been cut, saw, stain and packaged already. This makes installation of engineered wood floors much faster than that of a solid wood flooring whereby labour and cost installation will be much higher due to the time spent. For pre-finished wood products, they would have gone through a series of quality control before they went to be packaged and sent to the distributor. In such a way, that engineered wood flooring will have a relatively better quality than that of a solid wood.

Structural Stability

Engineered wood flooring has a relatively better structural stability than most solid wood species due to its 'sandwich-like' compact structure. However, it depends on the core layer of the engineered wood product. Home owners especially living in tropical countries like Singapore should look for tropical engineered wood; one such common tropical wood core layer is Hevea. Other common type of core layer includes Pine which is common for European climatic countries or HDF (High Definition Fibreboard) which may not be environmentally friendly. 

In all, good quality engineered wood do provides better dimensional stability to the entire wood flooring itself.

Product Warranty

Good quality engineered wood flooring usually has warranty period for both residential and commercial application. Compare to solid wood species which may not be able to give warranty on the product but can only provide on the workmanship. Hence, the warranty on good engineered wood flooring products can therefore give home owners a great sense of security.

Environmentally Friendly

Home owners and designers should source for good quality engineered wood flooring from credible supplier. Especially when dealing with the global timber market, illegal logging is a big concern. Reputable engineered wood flooring manufacturers will only sources wood from well audited sustainable resources and manufacture them in a environmentally responsible manner. Both solid wood and engineered wood products can help to make your surrounding air quality clean. This is because wood naturally does not acculmulate dust mites and therefore removes any possiblility of allergy in the home.

Cost Efficient

Engineered wood flooring is relatively more cost efficient than solid wood flooring. It's very good for young home owners who loves wood alot whereby they may not have a big renovation budget to spend on. Henve therefore, it's much cost wise for them to decide on engineered wood to solid wood, since you can't tell the difference between the two when both are installed on ground.

In a nutshell, both engineered wood and solid wood flooring are luxurious comfortable wood flooring that is both healthy to living beings as well as to the global environment. In the end, it is still the call of the home owner to decide which is best for them.