In looking at these pictures, what's your first reaction? Like a lot of people, you probably said to yourself, "the solid wood must be better because it's twice as thick". But, that would be incorrect. Before we go into why, let us explain the black line drawn on an angle on the picture of the solid wood. This represents where a nail would be driven into the floor during installation. Now allow us to explain.

When comparing solid wood to engineered wood, we tend to think about resurfacing or "refinishing" the floor years down the road. This of course is directly related to the longevity of the flooring. Thinking about resurfacing the floor sometimes is the reason we may be misled into believing that the solid floor is better or will absolutely last longer. This is not so. Let's refer back to the pictures above. While there is no question that the solid wood floor is much thicker, take a look at where the nail is. When doing your resurfacing, maybe on the second or third resurfacing about 60 to 80 years from now, you are going to run into (literally) one of two things. It will be the nails with the solid wood floor, or the plywood core on the engineered floor. So, with that statement, now do you believe that the solid wood will really last longer?

There are also other important factors to consider. A solid wood floor is usually less stable than an engineered wood floor. When we say less stable, we are referring to moisture and expansion related to that moisture. When you get climate changes in your home, which you absolutely will, wood flooring expands and contracts. With solid wood flooring, it generally expands and contracts a lot more than the engineered wood. Engineered wood flooring is constructed to be dimensionally stable, while most solid wood floors are simply cut pieces of wood from a tree. Considering solid wood floors are cut pieces of wood, there is a lot more room for error or "cabin grade" type wood to be used. What we're saying here is that if you happen to see a solid wood floor real cheap, you are probably getting exactly what you are paying for, junk. While the same holds true for engineered wood floors, there is a lot less cabin grade around.

As we mentioned, the solid wood floors expand more than the engineered, and they expand vertically as well as horizontally. While you get little to no vertical expansion with most engineered wood floors, you may get a lot of this vertical expansion with the solid floors. Vertical expansion is when the boards will actually grow up and shrink down in addition to the side to side or horizontal expansion and contraction. The end result of this can be raised boards that sometimes catch your shoes and become a trip hazard. When looking at wood flooring samples, you will notice that most solid, pre-finished wood floors have beveled edges. These beveled edges counteract the raised boards that can become trip hazards, and sort of act as a smoother for the joints. The down side to this is the appearance. The beveled wood floors are not as natural looking. Also, when you get horizontal contraction, the boards may shrink slightly and unfortunately, the bevel edges tend to accentuate these gaps or basically make them look bigger. We have also heard complaints from customers who have had this type of wood flooring, that the bevels seem to hold the dirt when trying to clean the floor. This could be true depending on the depth of the bevel.