- What type of flooring to choose?
- What kind of flooring to choose?
- Solid wood flooring, engineered wood flooring, laminate flooring: advantages & disadvantages
- What is Solid Wood Flooring?
- What is Engineered Wood Flooring?
- What is Laminate Flooring ?
- What Is PVC Wood Flooring?
- What types of wood flooring can be installed with underfloor heating?
- What types of wood flooring can be installed over an underfloor cooling system?
- Which parquet should you choose for a humid room?
- How to choose flooring for a high foot traffic area?
- Which Wood Species to Choose?
- What finishes for your parquet?
- Laying your flooring – the basics –
- How to maintain your parquet or laminate flooring
- What are the technical specifications?
What is Solid wood Flooring?
Solid wood flooring is the traditional parquet par excellence. It stands out for its durability. Its structure is made up of 100% noble wood, giving it unfailing resistance, allowing for future renovations and extending its lifespan.
Factory-treated, machined and dried, solid parquet strips are suitable for both domestic and commercial use. These treatments, combined with a moisture content of between 8% and 12%, ensure that the wood lasts in high-traffic areas.
Although solid parquet represents a financial cost and a long-term investment, it is essential to know its characteristics in order to make the best choice. Opting for solid wood flooring means choosing from a wide range of characteristics.
Plank thickness
Plank thickness (which also determines wear-layer thickness): The wear-layer is the thickness of the wood lying above the system of interlocking joints on the flooring strips. Solid wood flooring can be divided into three categories based on its thickness:
- Traditional wood flooring: over 20 mm thick. Laid by nailing onto battens, load bearing panels or joists. Wear-layer between 6 and 7 mm.
- Thin, interlocking solid wood flooring: 12 to 15 mm thick. Laid directly onto screed or onto a suitable insulating material. Wear-layer between 4 and 5 mm.
- Fine, solid wood flooring: 8 to 10 mm thick. Laid by gluing onto the substrate. The wood is often supplied unfinished, with finishing carried out on-site. Wear-layer between 1 and 3 mm.The thicker a wooden floor, the more often it can be renovated.
Note: expect between 1 and 3 mm of thickness loss per renovation.
The type of wood
Solid wood flooring inherits all the original properties of the wood it is made from: grain, texture, colors, oxidization, color change over time…
The solid parquet is manufactured from a single frieze of wood.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parquet_(construction)
Parquet plank dimensions
Solid wood flooring comes in a range of dimensions, giving you a host of possibilities.
PLANK WIDTH :
The wide and XXL planks are the big trend of the moment. From 150 mm to 250 mm wide, these XXL parquet floors are suitable for both large and small spaces. The wide planks reveal all the beauty and roughness of your wood floor.
The planks of conventional widths (up to 120 mm wide) are suitable for both large and small areas but offer a more traditional look.
PLANK LENGTH :
- Parquet floors with fixed length planks create a rhythmic and refined atmosphere: they make it possible to form installation patterns such as stone cutting, broken sticks, etc.
- Parquets with variable length planks are the most common: it is a random mixture of several lengths often proportional to the width of the plank. The wider the floorboards, the greater their maximum length. These parquet floors create a more traditional atmosphere and impose the most common installation pattern known as "English style".
Finishes
Aged, stained, saw-marked, sand blasted, oiled, varnished, waxed… A wide range of ever more elaborate procedures now exists to create an extensive array of decorative effects. In most cases, solid wood flooring is delivered ready to lay. Certain finishes sometimes require a small amount of protective treatment before use. Bare-wood flooring offers the possibility of designing the floor yourself by choosing your own mix of tints and finishes. In doing so, the floor you create will be unique.
Laying methods
- GLUING (most common): the flooring strips are joined and bonded to each other, then glued directly on to the substrate or isolating material: such a material is sometimes obligatory in blocks of flats and is itself glued to the substrate.
- NAILING: at less than 20 mm thick, solid wood flooring can be nailed onto battens. Battens are pieces of wood used to support wood-flooring strips. They are placed beneath the wooden floor in parallel and regularly spaced to fix it in place. This is the traditional method of laying wooden floors. You may require the assistance of a professional when laying solid wood flooring.
See all Solid wood floorings
