Here, we’d like to answer some of the common questions that we receive. Click on any question below to quickly access the related information.

What is this engineered flooring that everyone is talking about?

What are the advantages of engineered flooring?

How to place an order for hardwood flooring

What are the differences between Wood Grade Selections?

Do you provide products with reactive stains?

Will there be color variations between planks?

What is this engineered flooring that everyone is talking about?

When engineered wood was first introduced, it was considered by many to be the poor relation to solid wood, but even its harshest critics can’t say the same today. A good quality engineered wood floor will fool even the toughest skeptic into believing that the floor is or could be solid wood. It is impossible to tell apart engineered flooring from solid wood flooring once installed. Engineered hardwood flooring also should not be confused with laminate, which is only a picture of wood flooring, laminated onto a base layer.

Engineered hardwood consists of layers of real hardwood, bonded together with adhesives under intense heat and pressure before being topped off with a solid wood lamella or top layer. Thanks to its clever construction, engineered wood flooring doesn’t expand and contract to the same extent as solid wood. Because of this process, engineered hardwood flooring Is dimensionally stable and isn’t affected by humidity as much as solid hardwood.

What are the advantages of  engineered flooring?

Engineered hardwood is a stable product – more resistant to fluctuations in temperature and humidity than solid wood flooring. In the winter when it’s drier, hardwood floors will shrink. When there’s more moisture in the air, like in the spring or summer, all hardwood expands but engineered hardwoods don’t expand and contract to the same extent as solid wood, making it more resistant to warping and cupping. For that reason, it’s considered very strong and stable. In particular, kitchen and bathroom environments, where moisture levels and temperatures fluctuate enormously, the right engineered wood floor won’t even bat an eyelid.

It’s easy to install. Mostly found with a click fitting system, making it quick and easy to install & can be installed in a variety of ways & surfaces to suit your property and preference. Easy to work and quick to lay with the click system, which engineered hardwoods are built with.

As long as there is sufficient thickness on the top layer, engineered hardwoods can be sanded and re-finished if necessary. Although the number of times that engineered wood flooring can be sanded depends on the thickness of the lamella or top layer, there’s no getting away from the fact that engineered wood can be re sanded during its lifetime. Re-sanding a floor enables you to bring the floor back to life when it’s looking tired. It is also a good way to get rid of surface staining or marking. Once you’ve re-sanded your engineered wood floor, you can refinish it to protect it and make it look like new again. What this means is that you are completely free to change the look of your floor every time you re-sand and refinish it, giving you real flexibility.

It comes in a whole range of species, grades and finishes in the same way that solid wood flooring. The way wood floor boards are made, in order to achieve a wide solid wood board, you need a seriously big tree. This isn’t the case with engineered wood flooring. Because the core boards are made of plywood, the boards can be made much, much wider than solid wood flooring without breaking the budget. What this means is that you are able to find two or three strip engineered wood flooring that will allow you to have fewer joins across your floor and install your floor in a fraction of the time.

It is generally less costly & much more environment friendly. High quality engineered flooring wood is normally obtained from well audited and reliable sustainable forests. Hence, both the environment and the home owners end up benefiting. A customer should look out for the green-policies of hardwood flooring sellers.

One of the most crucial benefit associated together natural wood is that no dust mites accumulate on it. Dust mites can cause allergy or even asthma particularly in children. Hence, flooring using wood improves the quality of the air inside the house. In addition, wood flooring keeps the feet comfortable at any temperature levels, that is, if the temperature is low the wood flooring ensures that the feet are warm and when the temperature is high the wood flooring ensures that the feet are cool.

How to place an order for hardwood flooring?

Confused about how to order engineered flooring? We made it simple:

1) Choose a wood-specie
2) Choose the finish/color
3) Select your ideal thickness & width of your planks
4) If it’s a White Oak that you’re after, choose a grade

And you’re good to go! To find out which product suits the best for your project, please reach out to us or simple, visit one of our showrooms to talk to a flooring expert.

What are the differences between Wood Grade Selections?

Do you provide products with reactive stains? What do I need to know about these types of finishes?

Here at PL Floors, we now provide the revolutionary reactive stain hardwood flooring in our new collection. These exquisite, prefinished engineered wood flooring are new to the USA & they feature an advanced coloration technique, which opens a new era in the wood flooring industry. Designers quickly learn below, the features and benefits of these reactive stain floors provide immediately, life-long value to homeowners, reactive stains are pigment-free, water-based solutions that, when applied to hardwood, rapidly changes the natural elements found in wood to create a specific color range.

In Europe (mostly in Italy & France) in order to get the aged, antique feeling for the wood-planks, hardwood-finishers would often create their own, home-made reactive stains by dissolving steel wool in vinegar, ammonia (sometimes even horse urine) and salt acids.

Within this new reactive stain “know-how technology”, this process has become an even more eco-friendly process. Lately, reactive stain products are becoming greener, safer and more reliable finishes than traditional stains. Tannin is a compound, found in oaks and many other wood species. Due to a wide range of environmental factors/regions, these tannins change the color of the woods and same wood species from different regions and altitudes may even give different results.

Not so long ago, in order to achieve that “aged/antique look” in wood-floorings, a finisher had to wait for, well… ages! However, with the recent technological advancements within wood floor manufacturing, experts now have found a way to produce a completely safe and equally efficient method to fasten this aging process by highlighting and enhancing the natural characters to show the beauty of the natural wood.

To produce a reactive stain floor, a special, environmental-friendly solution is washed on each plank by 100% Italian made reactive stain machinery/equipment. During this application process, the woods rapidly undergo a significant oxidative reaction between the liquefied minerals in the reactive stain and the natural tannins found in the wood. In order to penetrate the wood and bring each plank to life, this innovative coloring process is repeated couple of times.

Our reactive stain products offer unique aesthetics, which the grain patterns display a reflective, stunning effect from any angle or standpoint Each plank will look stunningly rich, but still hold onto the natural characteristics of the wood.

Will there be color variations between planks? 

Hardwood flooring products are 100% natural and it means every single piece of wood will be unique, just like our fingerprints. This includes coloring, and variations within that coloring. Natural hardwood planks vary in color from board-to-board. Every piece you get may be different and this variation is part of the wood’s natural beauty and it is quite normal to expect such results.

Countless factors count in that affects the color of the boards like the species of the wood, the location/region of the tree – whether it is high altitude or close to sea level, the local climate, how it was sawn and dried, how long it waited on the ground, when or if it was milled, for how long it was stored and how the wood accepts the stain – especially reactive stains. Those differences in color and grain make each board unique.