Meet the Preservation Collection: Inspired by our best-selling floors with an 8-week lead time.
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There’s nothing quite like dark Cherry wood flooring to infuse a room with warmth and stunning beauty. The deep red tones of Cherry hardwood darken over time with exposure to air and sunlight, creating a floor with a burnished auburn color and distinctive flowing grain patterns – a work of art that only gets better over time.
This brief primer on dark Cherry wood flooring is intended as an introduction to Cherry floors and an overview of the many options available from Carlisle Wide Plan Floors.
Dark Cherry wood flooring is made with planks of wood from the American Black Cherry tree. The heartwood of a Cherry tree has hues that run from rich red to reddish-brown, while the sapwood tends to be a creamier white to yellow color. Cherry wood floors are also marked by a subtle but distinctive flowing grain pattern. The lustrous hues in the wood will darken more than other hardwoods as the boards age, producing beautiful dark Cherry wood flooring that is prized for its unique color.
Wide plank American Walnut flooring from Carlisle is made with boards that may be as wide as 20″ and up to 12′ long. When you compare wide planks to the 3″ boards used in traditional American Walnut flooring, you can quickly see the appeal of a wide plank floor. There are fewer seams, meaning the floor seems less “busy” or cluttered and infusing the room with more elegance and harmony. Wider planks also enable the personality of the wood to be revealed more easily. When you install wide plank American Walnut flooring in your home or business, your floor will become a central feature of the design aesthetic and a conversation piece for every visitor.
Whether you want a look that’s sleek, chic, or unique, we can provide a floor that fits your individual style.
Wide plank dark Cherry wood flooring is made with floorboards that are 5″ – 16″ wide and up to 12′ long. The extra width in these boards gives the floor a greater sense of elegance and spaciousness, as the minimal number of seams between planks makes the floor feel less “busy.” Wide plank dark Cherry wood flooring also allows the personality of the wood to emerge and the grain patterns to play across the boards more beautifully. Consequently, wide plank dark Cherry wood flooring is a sought-after option for home and business owners seeking to turn their floors into a stunning design feature of their spaces.
While dark Cherry wood flooring may be the perfect surface for your home or business, Carlisle offers several additional hardwood, Pine and reclaimed flooring options that may be equally suitable.
Cherry wood can be stained to a wide variety of colors, and at Carlisle we offer a virtually unlimited assortment of hues. However, when picking a color, it’s important to remember that the stain should enhance the natural color and grain patterns in the wood rather than fight with them or cover them up. Carlisle’s design team is happy to help you choose the right color for your floor and your interior design.
Textured floors are treated to make new wooden planks look like antique floorboards. At Carlisle, our craftsmen are experts at texturing dark Cherry wood flooring with techniques that add saw marks like those found in boards cut at early sawmills, or hand scraped edges that reproduce the look of boards prepared by hand more than a century ago. We also offer several proprietary techniques that give floorboards the appearance of wood worn down by foot traffic, weather and time.
Engineered Cherry wood flooring is made of multiple layers of material in order to create a floorboard that is more resistant to large changes in temperature, humidity and moisture. Where solid wood flooring will contract and expand in these conditions, engineered floors will hold their form. Engineered flooring is made with a top layer of hardwood that is glued to multiple layers of a backing material. Engineered dark Cherry wood flooring is appropriate for installation in basements, over concrete slabs, on radiant heating systems and in buildings that may have extreme variations in relative humidity from season to season. Engineered flooring is not suitable for location where relative humidity drop below 30%.
Prefinished dark Cherry wood flooring is a Cherry floor that has been sanded, stained to a dark color and sealed in Carlisle’s facility before it is delivered for installation. Prefinished floors let home and business owners skip the mess of sawdust and stain that is inevitable when floors are finished on site. Prefinished floors also let owners avoid the inconvenience of having to leave the property for a day or two while the floor receives multiple coats of varnish or polyurethane. Consequently, prefinished dark Cherry wood flooring can help to speed installation and reduce the installer’s costs.
Cherry wood has a Janka hardness rating of 995, which means it’s roughly the same hardness as Walnut. Among all the hardwood options, Cherry is on the softer side and may be scratched or dented a little more easily than floors made of Hickory, Ash or Maple. However, with proper care and maintenance, Cherry floors can easily hold their form and luster for many years.
Cherry floors can be cleaned with a combination of vinegar and water – 1 or 2 ounces of vinegar per 2 gallons of water. Vinegar is safe for the floor and for the environment, and has a natural acidity that helps to loosen dirt and contaminants. However, it’s always best to check with the manufacturer or installer of your hardwood floor for specific instructions on how to care for and clean it.
It’s not completely clear what causes Cherry floors to darken over time, but most people agree that a combination of oxidation and UV rays from sunlight are responsible for turning new Cherry planks into dark Cherry wood flooring over time.
Cherry hardwood flooring is made with timbers the American Black Cherry tree which is found throughout the Midwest and Eastern parts of the United States as well as a few places in Mexico. However, the trees that produce the best floorboards are grown in the Allegheny Plateau which runs through parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. A shorter growing season and perfect soil conditions produce trees with rich heartwood – this is where Carlisle harvests the most mature Cherry timbers for our wide plank floors.
For more than half a century, Carlisle has represented the very best in quality wood floors. Our wide plank floors – extraordinary handcrafted works of art – can be found today in businesses, restaurants, museums, boutiques and exceptional homes around the world. Every Carlisle floor is unique – a one-of-a-kind expression of the aesthetic and sense of style of the home or business owner who commissions it.
When designing their wide plank floors, our customers have a range of options in woods, colors, textures, grades and patterns, and our customer service representatives are constantly available to provide unmatched service and expert assistance along the way. At Carlisle, the journey of creating dark Cherry wood flooring is as memorable as living on it for years to come.
