Interior designers and homeowners alike drool over hardwood floors. If you read an article about a luxury home, odds are it has hardwood floors. However, they’re also known for being difficult.

However, what is lesser known is that there are various hardwood floors. By doing the proper research, you’ll be better prepared to pick one that doesn’t add too heavily to your home maintenance.

If you’re not sure that wood is the right choice for you, check out this blog post by New Day Floors. Having served San Antonio for many years and pleasing many customers, they can get on board with your home goals, bringing recommendations and identifying red flags.

What Are The Different Types Of Hardwood?

Many presume that the distinction between different wood floors is the type or quality of the wood used to make the planks. That’s a misconception. While hardwood floors are made of various woods of different quality, colors, and costs, there are different ways of putting the wood together. This is what distinguishes natural from vinyl and vinyl from laminate.

There are two main types of wood floors other than natural. Each has the unparalleled subtle boldness of wooden floors. So how do you choose? Here’s the breakdown as the experts see it:

Laminate

This one is generally a synthetic composite. The base is plywood, sometimes with a secondary layer for insulation. Then on top is an image layer, exactly what it sounds like. A high-quality image of wood is placed at the top to create the look of wood without any natural product. This technique can also be used for stone flooring.

On top of the image layer goes a transparent plastic laminate, hence the name. When done improperly, laminate floors sometimes look very artificial, but if you hire a pro, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to create a convincing illusion of real hardwood.

The Pros

Laminate flooring is occasionally preferred to real wood due to the following reasons:

  • It’s very durable. These floors are UV resistant,and you can get the waterproof variant if you request so at the time of installation. They are rarely scratched, and their color doesn’t fade like in natural wood.
  • Relative to hardwood, it’s affordable. Purchasing the planks and installation will be priced lower than they would be with natural wood.
  • It’s unlikely that you’ll ever need to repair your laminate, and with the seamless finish, cleaning is a breeze.
  • It can be Eco-friendly. As the world shifts toward sustainable materials, more and more companies have begun to offer laminate flooring made from recycled materials.

The Cons

The downsides are as follows:

  • They’re not waterproof by default. If your floors are made wet and left that way for an extended period, the planks will warp and maybe even crack. Even with a proofing treatment, homeowners will have to exercise caution. If the slightest bit of water makes it through, your entire floor must be removed.
  • You can’t refinish them once they’re installed. The only way to make these floors look as good as new is to replace them.
  • They’ll never look completely real. It won’t be clear to anyone who doesn’t closely examine your floors, but they may not fool everyone. Skilled flooring installers will easily have passersby believing that they’re walking on hardwood, but don’t expect to fool anyone who takes a closer look

Cleaning being performed by flooring services in San Antonio

Vinyl

New Day Floors offers many types of these floors, including SPC Rigid Core Luxury Vinyl Flooring, in San Antonio. It is extremely popular, given that it’s manufactured specifically to emulate the look and feel of natural wood.

Office hallway with laminate flooring in San Antonio

The Pros

The benefits of vinyl floors are as follows:

  • It takes a while for vinyl to become worn, but when it does, the maintenance is simple.
  • No matter what you spill, unless it’s corrosive, it should wipe right off
  • The lack of repairs needed for these floors makes them more affordable than some of their counterparts.
  • These floors feel more like real wood to bare feet

The Cons

  • They can’tbe repaired. Like laminate, once these floors are damaged, the only way to fix them is to replace them.
  • They have a short life relative to natural wood. They don’t have the longest life, even compared to laminate.

Cat enjoying the vinyl flooring in San Antonio

The only way to ensure that your chosen floor, be it tile or wood, is the most suitable option is by asking a flooring design specialist in San Antonio. When it comes to floors, unscheduled maintenance and repairs are a much larger disruption than the average repair job, especially if it applies to the whole home.

New Day Floors is a company that serves each customer and home as it needs with bespoke plans of action that will be pre-approved by you, should you choose to hire them. They truly do it all when it comes to floors, even dust-free services! Ceramic tiles flooring, rigid core luxury vinyl flooring, and residential carpeting are ready and waiting for you under the same roof (and on the same floor) in San Antonio. They even have bathroom renovations! Get in touch with New Day Floors LLC  to get started on floors fit for the finest rugs and most discerning of feet.

About the Author

Angelo Marquez has worked in interior design for thirty years. He has always found that wood is a material that lends itself to his design in a way that others don’t. In high school, he loved the wood shop and briefly considered being a carpenter, but ultimately realized that he wanted to create striking interiors, perhaps centered around wooden features but inclusive of other materials.