Oak Wood Flooring

Distressed Oak flooring is created by taking new boards and treating them with techniques to make them look old. Distressed Oak wood flooring has much of the same appeal as reclaimed floorboards, but at a fraction of the cost. Distressing methods include adding saw swirls and hand-scraped edges, as well as techniques for giving floorboards the appearance of wood that has been subtly worn down by weather, age and foot traffic.

Reclaimed flooring has become quite popular as home and business owners seek floors that have a sense of heritage and craftsmanship. Reclaimed Oak wood flooring uses floorboards that have been salvaged from centuries-old buildings like farms and factories that have been scheduled for demolition. Reclaimed Oak boards feature imperfections like nail holes, wormholes, knots, splits and cracks that immediately add warmth and character to the floor

Engineered Oak flooring is made with floorboards that have multiple layers of hardwood and backing material to form a strong core. Engineered Oak floors are designed to be more resistant to changes in humidity and temperature than solid Red Oak flooring or White Oak flooring. Consequently, engineered flooring is ideal for installation in basements, on radiant heating systems or over concrete slabs. With engineered Oak wood flooring, the top layer would feature a veneer of Red or White Oak.

Prefinished Oak wood flooring is exactly what it sounds like – a floor that has been finished at the manufacturer’s facility rather than needing to be finished on-site. The advantages of prefinished Oak wood flooring is that it allows the home or business owner to skip the mess and inconvenience of having a floor finished on-site. With prefinished floors, you don’t have to deal with a fine layer of sawdust covering everything, or with the smell and mess of stains, or with the need to vacate your space while installers coat the wood with sealant over several days. While some prefinished floors look cheap and plastic, our proprietary techniques make Carlisle prefinished floors as beautiful and solid as our unfinished flooring.

Rift and Quartersawn Oak is cut at a 90-degree angle from the center of the tree to produce floorboards with much tighter and straighter grain for a more consistent and elegant look. Rift and Quartersawn techniques inevitably produce more waste during cutting, making these floorboards somewhat more costly than plain sawn floors.

As you would expect, Red Oak has more reddish or salmon undertones in the wood. However, White Oak is surprisingly darker than Red Oak, with hues that are more in the nutty brown range. White Oak has a tighter and more consistent grain, while Red Oak floors have broader grain lines and more variation – from subtle wavy lines to larger swirls or circles.

Because Oak is a porous hardwood, Oak wood flooring can easily be stained in a variety of colors. While some manufacturers offer only a limited number of stains, at Carlisle you’ll find stains in virtually any color – from a very light Whitewash to a very dark and smoky Blacksmith stain.

Wide plank floors are made with floorboards that are wider and longer than the traditional commercial floorboards, which tend to be no more than 3” wide and 4’ long. In contrast, Carlisle wide plank Oak wood flooring may use boards that are up to 20” wide and up to 14’ in length. Wider, longer planks offer several advantages. Wide plank floors are more stable because they have far fewer seams and joints between boards. And with fewer seams, wide plank floors feel much less “busy” than traditional floors, making rooms feel more spacious, elegant and luxurious. Ultimately, wide plank flooring turns and otherwise nondescript floor into a stunning visual element and a central design feature of any room.

Oak wood flooring is made with floorboards cut from Oak hardwood trees. Because Oak is abundantly found throughout the world, Oak flooring tends to be highly affordable when compared with other types of hardwood. Oak also has a medium density, making it resistant to dents and wear while also being easy to work with and install.