If you're looking for flooring with warmth and classic, timeless beauty, then wood might be the best choice. Wood floors provide an ideal backdrop for almost any decorating style. Even when stained to a dark tone, they provide a neutral yet distinctive presence that anchors a room without calling attention to itself. Properly installed, wood floors can outlast the house they're in, and the patina they acquire with age increases their beauty.
Browse through the aisles of your home center and you'll find several species of wood flooring, generally in any of three styles: solid wood flooring, engineered flooring, and parquet.

Solid wood flooring
"Solid" exactly describes this kind of flooring; it's wood clear through. Wood flooring is manufactured from several species and three styles: strips (21/4-3 inches wide x 55 inches thick), planks (more than 3 inches wide x % inches thick) or random-width planks. All come in random lengths. Strips are milled with tongues on one side and grooves on the other. When you install this flooring, you drive nails diagonally through the tongues, anchoring the material solidly to the subfloor. Some plank flooring comes with tongues and grooves, but most have square edges.
You can purchase solid wood flooring either unfinished or prefinished. Unfinished flooring requires sanding and roughly two weeks of work, but allows you to choose the stain that's just right for your room. Prefinished flooring has a tough synthetic varnish. Prefinished flooring is ready to walk on the minute you install it. Many prefinished brands have a chamfered or rounded edge, which hides unevenness in the installation by creating a small valley between boards.
What species you choose will depend largely on the style of your room and the size of your budget. You will hear the terms "hardwood" and "softwood" when you're shopping for flooring, but don't let them mislead you. They are not so much an indicator of the durability of the wood as what kind of tree it comes from. Hardwoods come from trees that lose their leaves. Softwoods come from evergreens. Woods vary in hardness and finish.

Spieces - Wood Floor Installation in Toronto - Toronto Flooring Company

Pine, hemlock, and fir Installation in Toronto of Wooden floor in the living room
Pine tends to dent more easily than most hardwoods, but fir is a hard flooring. Older softwoods were much tougher, and many homes from the 1930s, '40s, and '50s have strip floors made of long-leaf Southern yellow pine, which is worth refinishing if it's basically in good shape. Pine, hemlock, and fir are perfect for creating a country look but might seem a little too casual in a formal dining room. In many retail outlets, softwoods are special-order flooring.

Maple and birch Install wood floors in Toronto - Wood floor contractors in Toronto flooring installation company
Maple and birch are look-alike species. Each displays a whitish color with light brown grain lines. The pores are closed, and the wood is very smooth as a result. (They are used for bowling alleys.) Both woods are usually given a clear finish and no stain. The surface burns easily during sanding, so leave finishing to a professional. Both are good for creating a clean, modern look or a light floor when you need to brighten up a dark room.

Oak Installation in Toronto Hardwood floor
Oak is a light brown wood with dark grain lines and open pores. It comes in two types: red oak and white oak. Red oak has a pinkish tinge. The grain in white oak is more subtle than in red, and white oak is somewhat browner than red oak. Oak is easy to finish and is usually stained to make it somewhat darker. It's good for creating a traditional-looking floor.

Ash floor installation Toronto
Ash is the wood baseball bats are made of. It's whiter than oak, looks a lot like it, and wears about as well. It's difficult to finish and is usually a custom-order floor.

Walnut and cherry floor installation Toronto
Both woods are favorites of furniture makers because they are attractive, stable, and work well. They are tough but softer than oak. Walnut is brown with open pores and finishes easily. Cherry is a lighter reddish brown with closed pores, and the surface tends to burn when sanding. The color of walnut usually lightens with age, while cherry's red color deepens as the years go by. Both are special-order woods and expensive.

Lumber grading includes a careful assessment of the appearance of boards. In one way it is an indication of quality, but it's one you may not necessarily need to include in your consideration of flooring. Select lumber (one of the best grades) exhibits a uniform color from board to board and has no knots. Common lumber contains small knots and variations in coloration from board to board. Both grades will wear about the same, so when it comes to longevity, you may not need a high-grade lumber. For a rustic design theme, the appearance of a lower grade of flooring may in fact be just what you're looking for - and it's a lot cheaper. (It may be a special order, however, and probably won't be available prefinished.)