When deciding on flooring options, homeowners have quite a few options available to them: Vinyl flooring, ceramic tile, and carpet are all popular options, but there is a classic flooring material with many advantages over the others: hardwood. This article will describe a few of those advantages.

1. Durability

Hardwoods provide a very durable flooring material when compared to pretty much anything other than ceramic tile. Even ceramic tile can shatter if something heavy and hard enough is dropped on it, where hardwood may get dents or scratches, but these can always be sanded out, making your wood floor look good as new.

Vinyl flooring looks great when it is new and has enough flexibility to absorb impacts, but a sharp cornered piece of furniture can be enough to tear a hole in your new vinyl floor. Hardwood won’t ever snag on the feet of your furniture, making it substantially more wear-resistant than vinyl flooring.

There isn’t even really any comparison between hardwood and carpet when it comes to durability. Carpet wears down from foot traffic, pets claws, even the vacuum you use to clean it. Friction from day to day traffic causes the carpet to lose fibers consistently, and then they are sucked up in the vacuum, making your carpet that much more worn.

Hardwood has no such issue. Regular traffic could pass for 25 years on hardwood with little wear to show. When hardwood”s finish does begin to wear, it is the only commonly used flooring material that can be refurbished rather than replaced as it wears.

2. Cleanliness

While cleanliness is primarily an advantage over the carpet, it is one that can not be overstated. If you have ever ripped out an old carpet, you know how much dust, debris, and general grossness falls through into the padding underneath, but a good portion of that is tracked around the house and inhaled. Hard flooring materials allow for much more thorough cleaning and disinfecting than carpet ever could.

3. Elegance

Put simply, no other flooring material has the universally elegant appeal of the best hardwood floors. Hardwoods provide the versatility to go with any style. Since the mid-twentieth century, many builders have defaulted to installing carpet in new construction. With carpet being so common, Hardwoods always make a home seem a little bit classier than other flooring materials.

Vinyl rolled flooring is generally considered a lower quality material, and one that would only be seen in a bathroom, laundry room, or kitchen. With modern engineered hardwood options and even vinyl wood planks, there are extremely durable options for your floor that look substantially more elegant than what was available in years past.

Engineered hardwoods are made by placing thin layers of hardwood flooring over a plywood core, giving them the surface durability of hardwood flooring, and the resiliency of artificial flooring material.

4. Renewability

Wood flooring is one of the only flooring options that is made from a completely renewable resource. Carpet is based on polymers made from fossil fuels. Even the current trend toward making carpet out of recycled soda bottles does not offset the huge amount of chemicals that go into the processing and dyeing of those carpets. While there are processing and pollution that occurs to produce wood flooring as well, it is nowhere near the level of most other types of flooring.

By utilizing bamboo floors, you can make your floor even more renewable. Bamboo is a grass rather than an actual hardwood, and it grows extremely fast. It can also be harvested without killing the plant, allowing it to grow back very quickly. Bamboo and hardwood floors also last for a very long time, so the bamboo forest will be harvested many times while you are still enjoying your flooring.

In summary, hardwood flooring is the best option for many reasons, including its durability, cleanability, elegance, and renewability. If you are looking at new flooring, it is hard to go wrong with hardwood!