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The advantages of finished hardwood flooring. As you consider high-end wood flooring to transform a space in your home or business, keep in mind the benefits of finished hardwood flooring. Traditionally, “prefinished” or finished hardwood flooring was not considered luxury wood flooring – prefinished floors were often associated with a cheaper or plastic appearance. But with proprietary techniques developed by Carlisle Wide Plank Floors, finished wood floors look and feels identical to floors that are finished on site, making finished hardwood flooring a popular option for many residential and commercial settings. In this short primer, we’ll cover the basics and answer frequently asked questions about finished hardwood flooring.
Finished hardwood flooring, also known as prefinished flooring, is a hardwood floor that has been sanded, stained and sealed at the manufacturer’s facility rather than on site after installation in a home or business.
The chief advantage of finished hardwood flooring is that it eliminates the need for floors to be sanded, stained and sealed on site, which tends to be both a messy and inconvenient process. Sanding often coats large sections of a dwelling with a fine layer of sawdust. Staining can also be messy and may produce strong odors. And sealing a floor on site requires that the occupants vacate the premises for a day or two. In contrast, finished hardwood flooring comes with none of these drawbacks. Your finished floor can be quickly and easily installed with no mess and little inconvenience.
Traditionally, the quality of finished hardwood flooring paled in comparison to floors finished on site. Finished flooring often had a cheap look that dissuaded homeowners seeking more elegant and luxurious solutions. Additionally, some finished hardwood flooring is difficult to touch up, making it harder to hide scratches and other types of wear and tear over the years.
Wide plank finished hardwood flooring, like the floors available from Carlisle, are simply prefinished floors made with floorboards that can be as much as 12” wide and 12’ long. Traditional commercial flooring tends to use boards that are only 3” wide and 3’ to 4’ long. Compare the look of a traditional and a wide plank floor and you’ll quickly see the appeal of wider, longer boards. A wide plank floor has a sense of spaciousness, elegance and visual beauty that can’t be replicated with traditional flooring.
To produce finished hardwood flooring that offers the same quality as floors finished on site, Carlisle developed Carlisle Custom Coat® stains and topcoats that are unlike anything else on the market today. This finish process is revolutionary, combining time-honored techniques with modern technology to produce finished flooring that is identical in look and feel to site-finished floors.
At Carlisle, our finished hardwood flooring comes in a wide variety of types of wood:
• Ash floors are highly dense and durable and come in colors that range from cream to light blonde to rich nutty brown hues.
• Birch flooring offers grain patterns that range from highly figured flames to subtle swirls, with planks that combine blonde outer edges and warm amber portions.
•Brown Maple floors are cut from the oldest part of the timber to produce a distinctive brown hardwood with subtle and consistent grain patterns.
• Cherry floors have a deep, glowing red color that will darken to a rich, burnished auburn color as the floor ages.
• Hickory has a tensile strength that rivals steel, with lighter blonde sapwood in hues that range from cocoa brown to beige in the heartwood.
• Red Oak floors have deep, salmon tones with wider, prominent grain patterns.
• Walnut is a dark wood flooring with rich mocha hues and complex grain patterns that make it suitable for any setting.
• White Maple has strikingly beautiful grain patterns that evoke flowing water, with clean and lighter hues for a more neutral finish.
• White Oak it is a versatile and dense wood with dramatic grain patterns that range from simple and sleek lines to vibrant swirls.
• Rift & Quartersawn White Oak produces strikingly beautiful floors that can be finished with almost any stain color. Special cutting techniques produce straight parallel lines in the grain with vibrant ray flecks that radiate across each board.
When ordering finished hardwood flooring from Carlisle, you can customize your floor with choices that include:
• Structure. Carlisle prefinished floors can be ordered as solid or engineered hardwood flooring. Engineered floorboards are made with a composite of materials and a hardwood veneer, all glued together to form a board with a strong core that is more resistant to temperature and humidity changes.
• Grade. Ranging from rustic to elegant and luxurious, Carlisle proprietary wood grades can help you select just the right look for your finished hardwood flooring.
• Width. From the uniform look of identical widths to the visual aesthetic of a floor with randomly sized planks, the right choice in width depends on the style of the room and your personal taste.
• Texture. Carlisle’s expert craftsman can treat your finished hardwood flooring with a variety of handmade surface treatments to give your floor an older, timeworn appearance.
• Color. Carlisle offers a virtually unlimited number of color choices in stains, a refreshing change from many manufacturers who provide a more limited palette.
As a leader in flooring fashion for more than 50 years, it’s no surprise that Carlisle continues to lead the industry with proprietary processes for finished hardwood flooring. A finished Carlisle floor has a deep, hand-rubbed appearance rather than one that appears painted on. Every inch of every board is meticulously sanded and the best available stain and sealer are applied under ideal conditions. Most floors have stain color applied to the side match tongue and a final coat of urethane applied to all four sides of the board, helping to hide seasonal gapping and to create a more moisture-resistant floor. Additional benefits of Carlisle finished hardwood flooring include:
• Board widths up to 12” wide – most finished hardwood flooring from other manufacturers only offers boards up to 5” wide.
• Lengths up to 12’ long – most prefinished floors use boards that are only 2.5’ long.
• The use of high-quality urethane that enhances the natural beauty of the wood, does not contribute to buildup and is easier to maintain.
• Environmentally friendly materials that contain no measurable VOCs.
• Boards that are end-squared at end-matched for more precise fit, making installation easier. CTA
