INDUSTRY TRENDS

BLACK MESQUITE is ultra-stable and has a beautiful silky texture, wild grain and character in a range of medium brown and gray-brown colors that patina darker with age.

Achieve hardcore results with today’s exotic hardwood flooring

Few renovations add more value, elegance and beauty to homes and offices than hardwood flooring.

According to realtor.com, this one simple addition can increase a house’s value by 2.5%. Other estimates have shown a 70% to 80% Return-on-Investment (ROI). Why? Because, like kitchens and bathrooms, bright and beautiful hardwood floors standout during the sales process. In addition to providing a perfectly beautiful accent to any room, they are also the ideal low-maintenance accessories for environments looking to reduce the dust, dirt and debris typically trapped in carpets and rugs.

Furthermore, every hardwood floor is unique. In fact, today’s exotic imports can brighten virtually any setting, while adding character and depth through a wide range of gorgeous colors, highlights and unique grain patterns. Want to change a room’s motif every few years? Users need only sand down the floor and add a few coats of stain or natural finish to produce a new lustrous look.

The key is finding the wood species that best meets the long-term goals and design tastes of home or building owners. As opposed to engineered options, solid wood flooring, which is typically milled from a single piece of wood, possesses everlasting qualities that enable it to retain its luster and beauty even after being refinished multiple times over decades or even centuries.

In addition, there are a wide assortment of exotic South American hardwoods that have rapidly grown in popularity across North America due to their ability to add an artistic flair into most any vision and/or design trend. For instance, the superior hardness, durability and magnificent colors of

OFFERING A FLAMING blend of red, orange, green and purple on a golden brown and highly fi gured base, canarywood (a.k.a. tarara amarilla) is an excellent choice for any environment seeking to showcase gorgeous natural wood as a grand piece of artwork on the fl oor.

these species have combined with the ever-rising costs of domestic woods to make hardwoods like black mesquite/ algarrobo from Argentina and Paraguay ideal for applications requiring phenomenal stability and beautiful brown and gray-brown rustic fi nishes.

Other popular South American woods include Brazilian oak or tauari, which is similar in look, color and stainability to North American white and red oak, but is 35% harder, more naturally stable and consistently cleaner. Ranging from cream and tan to medium brown with a beautiful grain, Brazilian oak also takes stains beautifully due to its greater consistency and structural integrity.

Cumaru, sold as Brazilian teak, is another extremely hard wood from Brazil and Peru that has gained favor based on its warm, golden caramel to medium-brown colors highlighted by deep wavy grain patterns. Exceptionally durable, Brazilian cherry, also known as jatoba, paquio and azucar huayo, has also become particularly marketable given its cinnamon-brown color and dark streaks, which become increasingly more pronounced and distinguished with age.

As for the boards themselves, most solid wood floor boards are milled to ¾” thicknesses with a few highly stable woods, such as the black mesquite, produced in solid ½” thicknesses to help facilitate the glue-down to slab application that is common throughout various regions of the country. Generally, the thicker the board, the greater the durability thanks to the multiple times it can be re-sanded over time.

Another consideration is the face width of each individual fl oor board. Solid wood fl ooring typically ranges from 2-1/4” to 5” with wider planks possible on a custom mill basis. Depending on the project’s aesthetics, wood fl oors can then be installed with either single-width planks or random-width boards when multiple widths of the same product are available.

And for the environmentally-conscious, consumers should be constantly reminded that exotic hardwoods are forest-friendly products that do not typically accompany the burning or clear-cutting processes employed by many agricultural or farming practices. There are also numerous wood species within the Amazon that have been certifi ed by the Forest Stewardship Council, the gold standard for responsible forest management and the only system of its kind supported by groups such as the WWF, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council and National Wildlife Federation. Sold within the United States by leading exotic hardwood fl ooring suppliers, these include spectacularly beautiful, exotic hardwoods like canarywood, tiete rosewood, momoqui, Patagonian rosewood and kempas.

And that’s what makes exotic hardwoods among the best options for not only beautifying fl oors, but also adding a dramatic, sparkling presence that will last for the life of any home or offi ce with the proper care and maintenance. Whether the end user is looking to accent a small sitting room or create an artistic centerpiece for a luxurious conference room or dining area, the choices are always abundant, enduring, stunning and extremely salable.

– John McGlocklin is the owner, founder and president of Elemental Hardwoods, Seattle, Wa. The company was founded in 2000 to provide fl ooring specialists, distributors and their customers with an exotic mix of imported hardwoods. For more info, visit www.elementalhardwoods.com, email info@elementalhardwoods. com, or call (504) 756-8876.