What's the Best Hardwood Flooring?
Engineered, Strip, Plank & Parquet

The best hardwood flooring is the one that fits your traffic needs, installation challenges and budget. The industry has created literally hundreds of options to meet any of these challenges from horrible to fantastic.

Here's an idea of all your solid wood hardwood flooring options... this does not discuss laminated flooring which is made from synthetic material and printed with a picture of real wood to imitate nature :)

Solid Hardwood Flooring:
This commonly refers to a solid wood flooring that is 2 1/4" or 3 1/4" wide, although quite a variation of widths are available as manufacturers try to get the best yield out of available material. Most commonly 3/4" thick and comes in various lengths.

Typical pricing: $3.50 to $8.00 per square foot

Parquet Hardwood Flooring:
This is a product from our mother's era, although it experiences short comebacks when manufacturer recreate cool mosiac patterns. It is made like a jigsaw puzzle and lays down in small tiles like ceramic. It is one of the best hardwood flooring products for the DIY installer

Typical Pricing: $1/ft for the most basic to $10. per square foot for some really amazing and intricate patterns.

Engineered Hardwood Flooring:
This is relatively new to the hardwood market and often gets confused with its laminate cousin. Both products can have a similar construction, but an engineered hardwood floor has a real wood layer NOT a photograpy reproduced in resin and printed on the surface.

This is the most complicated hardwood to buy, as it ranges from absolute junk to very specialized product designed for complex installations over radient heating systems and on concrete slabs

Typical Pricing: $4.50 to $10.00 per square foot

Floating Hardwood Floors:
This is an even newer style; an engineered floor with a real wood surface that is structurally designed to be installed as a floating floor. Mirage Lock Floating floor is one of the few I know of on the market.

Typical Pricing: $4.50 to $7.00 per square foot

Further Information:
Hardwood Flooring