Hardwood floors offer the unmistakable charm and timeless beauty only found in authentic, real wood. They are never out of fashion and add real value to the home. Many interior decorators today prefer hard wood floors as the base layer and then add an area rug to enhance the room's overall color scheme.

According to the National Wood Flooring Association (NWFA) & Residential real estate agents, homes with wood floors hold their value better, sell faster, and fetch higher prices, according to a recent nationwide survey commissioned by the trade organization. By a three-to-one margin, real estate agents said that a house with wood floors would sell faster than a carpeted house. Some 58 percent said a house with wood floors would bring a higher price. More than three-quarters of interior designers find that wood flooring works well with many decorating styles. "It's the most versatile floor covering there is," says one designer. "Wood goes with contemporary and traditional and everything in between." Designers rated natural materials as superior to man-made materials in beauty, prestige, style, maintenance, and durability.

When compared to other flooring products, hardwood floors provide long-lasting value, as Real Wood Floors are "Beauty that last a lifetime".

With the variety of products available and a choice of installation options, hardwood flooring can now be installed in any room of the home. The only consideration is whether the floor will be installed on-, above- or below-grade. For example, because of potential moisture problems, solid hardwood is not recommended for installations below grade, such as in a basement.

Today's hardwood floors come in a much wider selection of colors, wood species, and widths. Besides the classic North American hardwoods (like red oak, white oak, maple and ash) many manufacturers now offer exotic hardwood species from all over the World. Exotic hardwoods give homeowners the chance to better express their own personal decorating tastes with a more unique looking floor.

As a rule there are three different construction types of wood flooring: Solid, Engineered and Long strip.

SOLID: They are a solid piece of hardwood cut into wood planks that are generally 3/4" thick. (Above ground level areas only, not recommended for concrete slabs.) The strips or planks are generally in random lengths 12 inches to 84 inches. Solid wood floors are more sensitive to moisture than engineered floor. A ¾ inch thick floor can only be nailed or stapled down. In the winter heating months, moisture leaves the wood causing the floor to contract, which may leave slight gaps between each plank. In the summer months when the humidity is higher, the wood will expand and the gaps will disappear.

ENGINEERED: They are several plies of wood that are glued and laminated together to form a wood plank. They range in thickness from 1/4" to just over a half inch. (Can be installed almost anywhere in the home, including over dry concrete slabs.) Engineered wood floors are very popular and offer several advantages over solid wood floor. Engineered wood floors range from ¼" to 9/16" in thickness and from 2 ¼" to 7" in width. The lengths will generally be random and range from 12" to 60" in length. The top layer is generally factory prefinished with a polyurethane and aluminum oxide finish. Engineered wood planks are much more dimensionally stable than solid wood. The more piles that make up the product, the more stable the product will be. However using more piles will usually reduce the thickness of the top layer, decreasing the amount of refinishing that can be done.

LONGSTRIP: They are really an engineered construction but are much longer and wider. The top layer of a long strip plank generally has 2-3 rows of thin hardwood strips spliced together to form a solid surface. This gives the appearance of having 2-3 planks locked together, but it is really just one board. Long strip planks can be glued-down, stapled or floated over a wide variety of sub-floors and installed in almost any area of the home. This includes installing over dry concrete slabs. Long strip planks are approximately 86" in length and 7 ½" in width. The finish layer of long strip plank will generally have between 17 to 18 pieces in the three row series. This gives the effect of installing a board that is 3 narrow planks wide and several planks long. Each long strip plank looks like an entire section that has already been pre-assembled for you.

EXOTIC HARDWOOD FLOORS: They are used to describe hardwood species from around the World. These hardwoods are not found in North America and come from Australia, Africa, Brazil and the Far East. Exotic hardwoods offer unique wood graining and colorations. Most exotic floors are available in engineered wood construction but some are available in solid hardwood planks as well.

Top 5 things you should know when choosing a wood floor or hardwood flooring product:

1. Always set a budget, remembering, if the price sounds to good to be true, it's most likely of lesser quality

2. Choose a wood floor according to the rooms use;

3. Choose a style/design to match and/or compliment the rooms decor;

4. Choose a wood floor product with proper finish that can handle the traffic for that specific area/room

5. Always use a professional wood floor installer as there are many technical concerns that can adversely effect or compromise the product.