Wooden Flooring in the Home
Why Choose Wood?
Apart from building an extension or getting a new roof, one of the major home improvements people make is to change or upgrade their floors. A good-looking floor can add a great deal of value to a home, quite apart from giving it a chic new feel. Even just tearing up old carpeting and refinishing existing wood floors is usually less expensive than buying and installing new carpeting. In addition, hardwood floors last a lot longer than carpets. Granted that you may need to refinish them from time to time, but carpets start to look worn and faded after just a few years, and might even become a health hazard.
The biggest downside of carpeting is that they aren't very friendly for allergy sufferers or anyone who is concerned about indoor pollution, which can include things such as pollen, dust, pet dander, mould, and mildew. Carpets can be breeding grounds for all of these. Even if you vacuum and wash your carpets on a regular basis, it is impossible to really get them clean, because dust and grime sift through the backing of the carpet and get between it and the pad beneath.
The actual process of cleaning the carpet can lead to worsening the problem, residual dampness from a carpet shampooing can actually encourage more things to grow within the fibres of the carpet making it a bacterial nest and a perfect place for the growth of mould and other unsuitable pollutants
A hardwood floor, on the other hand, never goes out of style and does not mutate into a breeding ground for germs as it forms a durable surface which is not easily permeated. Hardwood floors don't hide dust, dirt, mildew or any other unpleasantness, and the finish that's applied to the floorboards protects them from penetration. That is why hardwood floors are a superior choice, not only for aesthetic reasons but because they simply allow for a healthier living environment than carpets do.
Over the past decade we have seen a dramatic increase in the incidence of breathing Inner city living has led to a dramatic increase in asthma and breathing related conditions particularly amongst children and the rest of the population. The route cause of this can probably be attributed to inner city pollutants but it must also be aggravated by dust harbouring situations and Carpets and soft furnishings are most likely to be a major contributing factor.
Western cultures in Europe and in particular in the UK were used to fibre floor coverings which became very popular in the post war Britain as a means to cover bare floor boards and to make the rooms feel warmer against the wet and cold British climate. Whereas many European countries prefer hardwood, tiled or marble flooring for its cooling affect in the warmer climates.
Southern Europe enjoys a more temperate climate and due to lower cost and availability it is more likely to see stone, granite, marble floor covering to homes as opposed to carpeting. It is customary to have loose rugs over the flooring.
Scandinavia is generally colder than the UK yet it also prefers to have hardwood or timber flooring this is due to the abundance of timber in Scandinavia and the lifestyle preferences of those countries that are used to wood flooring as part of their cultural heritage.
It is from Scandinavia that the influence of hardwood flooring has mainly impacted upon British living with Swedish and Danish stores opening in the UK back in the late 60’s such as Habitat and more recently IKEA the room settings were all based around hardwood flooring as standard and this naturally impacted and left an indelible impression upon the home makers visiting the stores who simply wanted what they had seen within the flooring and liked what was seen and this started a desire to purchase wood flooring and created a wood flooring culture and a dramatic change of flooring shops from selling conventional carpets to offering wood flooring alternatives.
The initial problems of wood flooring was the cost and this led to a desire for consumers to DIY the laying of wood flooring and encouraged manufacturers to produce easier to lay wood flooring systems as opposed to the raw boards that needed highly experienced wood flooring installation people. The advent of click board systems and laminated packs enable the consumer with a degree of DIY experience to lay a wood floor with a degree of competence and finish that enabled the consumers to cut costs and further led to a torrent of suppliers producing wood floor systems that began to flood the market.
Within the past 10 years all of the leading DIY stores now offer Wood flooring as standard and rarely offer any alternative. Wood flooring is as common today as carpets were in the 60’s and 70’s in fact more wood flooring is laid today than traditional carpets so Britain has truly become a more European country in terms of lifestyle change and general living conditions.