Birch hardwood flooring is a great alternative to oak and maple floors. The floor comes with a number of advantages:
Options
When you choose this flooring material you have a wide range of options to choose from. For example, you can choose to install paper, yellow or sweet birch.
Paper birch is the softest and has a hardness of about 910 on the Janka scale. Yellow birch is a little bit harder than paper birch. According to experts, its hardness is almost equivalent to that of some oaks and green ash. Sweet birch is the hardest. It’s harder than sugar maple, white and red oak.
Regardless of the type of birch you choose, the flooring material will add warmth to your house.
Health Benefits
It’s good to note that birch flooring is stain-proof; therefore, you don’t have to worry of allergic stains getting on your floor.
Cost Effective
Hardwood flooring is known to be expensive; however, birch flooring makes it affordable for you to install hardwood floor in your house. According to experts, the costs of this flooring falls within the lower to average price range of other hardwood floor types.
Workability
The flooring has excellent machining properties thus you can easily sand it. You should sand it properly in order to avoid coming up with a rougher product. Since it has a smooth finish, it’s a great candidate for paints and stains. If you have installed sweep birch, you should apply darker stains on it.
In addition to staining properly it’s also sturdy. This is because it has exceptional nail holding ability.
Maple Vs Birch flooring
Many people don’t tell the difference between maple and birch flooring materials as the two have almost similar appearances. For example, both woods share light sapwood with darker reddish tones.
While the two materials may look the same, they aren’t. For example, the hardest maple, sugar maple has a hardness value of 1450. This is lower compared to the hardest birch, sweet birch that has a hardness value of 1470. This means that if you are looking for the hardest material you should go for birch hardwood flooring.
Conclusion
This is what you need to know about birch hardwood flooring. For the floor to retain its good look for a long time, you need to take care of it. One of the ways of taking good care of it is placing mats at the entryways. This is to avoid heel marks on the floor.