Engineered construction
Engineered hardwood is a wood floor. The face is wood, white oak through most of this range, so it takes light, darkens with age and marks the way a wood floor marks. White oak engineered boards dominate the category for the same reason white oak dominates solid flooring: it takes stain evenly and its grain is quiet enough to live with. The difference sits underneath. Rather than one thick piece of oak, the plank is built up from layers laid crossways to one another, and that cross grain is what stops the board from swelling across its width when the humidity in a house climbs in July and falls again in January.
That stability is the whole reason the category exists. A solid board wants to move, so it is nailed to a wooden subfloor and kept away from slabs, basements and heat under the floor. An engineered board barely moves, which is why the same floor can run over concrete, over radiant heat, and in the wide plank engineered widths past nine inches that a solid plank of the same width would fight.
The four hardwood ranges
Everything below the grid belongs to one of four ranges. They differ in three things that matter: the thickness of the real wood above the core, the size of the board, and whether the core is wood or stone.
- McCarran: 9.5 by 86 inch boards with a 4 mm wear layer, about 15 mm thick. The longest and widest floor here, and the one with room for more than one refinish. A box covers about 34 square feet in six boards.
- Ladson: 7.5 by 75 inch boards with a 2 mm wear layer, 12 mm thick. The middle of the range in size and in sanding life. A box covers about 35 square feet in nine boards.
- Kelmore: 7 by 48 inch boards with a 1.2 mm wear layer. The shortest and thinnest of the wood cored floors, and the easiest to handle in a room full of doorways. A box covers about 23 square feet in ten boards.
- Woodhills: 6.5 by 48 inch boards around 7 mm thick, built on a stone core with a pad bonded to the back. This is the waterproof engineered hardwood in the range. A box covers about 22 square feet in ten boards.
There is also a 5 by 24 inch block cut for herringbone, sharing McCarran's 4 mm wear layer, where each piece meets the next at an angle. A box holds twenty pieces and covers 15.5 square feet.
Wear layer thickness
The wear layer is the real wood above the core, and it is the figure worth comparing between two engineered floors that look identical in a photograph. Thicker means more surface left to sand back later, which is what separates a floor that can be refinished more than once from a floor whose factory finish is the finish it keeps.
Thicker is not automatically the right answer. A 4 mm layer costs more and earns that in a hallway, a kitchen or a house that changes hands; 1.2 mm under a spare bedroom will outlive the decor in the room without ever being touched. The point is knowing which number is on the pallet, because it becomes invisible the moment the floor is down.
Hardwood plank sizes
Width and length do more to a room than color does. A 9.5 by 86 inch board leaves very few end joints in a large open floor, so the grain runs on and the floor reads as one surface. The same board is awkward in a hallway, where most of its length ends up as offcuts. Shorter boards at 7 by 48 and 6.5 by 48 inches carry up a staircase, cut around doorways and waste less in a room broken up by walls.
- Open plan living, large bedrooms: the longest boards, 9.5 by 86 inches.
- Ordinary rooms and hallways together: 7.5 by 75 inches, the width most people picture as a wood floor.
- Stairs, landings, small or awkward rooms: 7 by 48 or 6.5 by 48 inches.
- Entry halls and dining rooms where the floor is the feature: the 5 by 24 inch herringbone block.
For the longest boards in the catalog see extra long planks, and for wide boards across both wood and vinyl see wide plank flooring.
White oak color families
Oak is the face on most of this range, which is why the colors sit in a narrow, liveable band, not a rainbow. They group three ways. Beige hardwood covers blonde, honey and natural oak tones and is the easiest group to light a dark room with. Brown hardwood runs from sandy tan through chestnut to walnut and reads warmer and more traditional. Gray hardwood is the smallest group, weathered and cool, and it holds up next to white walls and black hardware.
Most of these colors are graded as high shade variation, which means the boards in one box differ from each other on purpose. It is the character people buy a wood floor for, but it changes how a floor is planned: a room is usually set from several open boxes at once, so light and dark boards spread out instead of landing in a patch by the window.
Waterproof engineered wood
Woodhills is built differently from the other three. Its core is stone based, not wood, with a pad bonded to the back, and MSI files it with its waterproof floors, not its hardwood. The face is still genuine wood, which is what separates it from a vinyl plank printed to look like oak, while the core underneath shrugs off the moisture that would lift a wood one. That is the version for a laundry, a basement or a bath.
On the wood cored ranges, water is a question of time instead of drama. A spill wiped up is nothing; a dishwasher leaking overnight is a different story, and it is the seams instead of the surface that suffer first. Worth deciding before the floor goes down and not after.
Concrete, radiant heat and basements
Engineered boards are the usual answer for a concrete slab and for rooms with heat under the floor, and the manufacturer's installation instructions for each range set out the moisture test, the acclimation period and the surface temperature ceiling that apply. Moisture is the variable that decides the outcome, because a slab that reads wet stays wet once a floor covers it.
Below grade, in a basement or over a crawl space, the stone cored range is the safer of the two families for the reason given above.
Against solid wood and vinyl
A solid board is wood all the way down, so it can be sanded many times, but it moves with the seasons and stays off slabs and out of basements. Engineered wood gives up part of that sanding life and takes stability in return, which is the exchange most houses are better off making.
Luxury vinyl plank costs less, shrugs off scratches and is waterproof throughout, but its grain is printed, so it cannot be refinished and it does not age. Wood look porcelain removes the wood altogether: a tile that handles water, pets and a mop without argument, for rooms where the look matters more than the material.
Coverage and hardwood trim
Wood flooring is sold by the box, so the arithmetic is floor area divided by the coverage of one box, rounded up. Trade practice is to allow ten to fifteen percent over the measured area for cuts, with the higher figure for herringbone, where every piece meets another at an angle and the offcuts are harder to place.
Edges are what make a floor look finished. A stair nose caps a step, quarter round closes the gap at the wall, a T-molding joins two floors of the same height in a doorway, and an end cap meets carpet or a threshold. They sit together in flooring trim, and ordering them alongside the floor keeps the color batch consistent.
Hardwood samples
Wood tone is the thing photographs get wrong. A blonde oak that looks warm on a screen can read gray in a north facing room, and high shade variation means the board in the picture is one board out of many. Many of the colors here can be ordered as a sample first, which is the cheapest way to watch a floor change through a day in the room it is going into.
