Tree Species for Wood Flooring

Oak

Oak is one of the most widely used and recognised types of wood. Oak grows in Europe, North America and Canada.

Oak has great strength and hardness and has been used as a building material for centuries. It has very attractive grain patterns and can be quarter sawn into large panels if needed. Historically it has been used for everything from Shipbuilding, to housing construction and of course flooring.

Oak is available in any number of beautiful finishes and colours. It can be smoked to give it a dark, aged look, stained or left quite natural for a neutral look.

The oak tree is sacred to many cultures due to its usefulness and importance throughout history and so is a prestigious flooring to own.

View our range of oak flooring.

Bamboo

Bamboo is not strictly a tree; it is one of the largest members of the grass family. It is also one of the fastest growing woody plants, with some bamboo growing up to 60cm per day in perfect conditions.

The species of Bamboo most commonly used for flooring is Moso.

Bamboo is an attractive material for flooring for a few reasons. It has very similar properties to hardwoods due to its strength, durability and resistance to insects and moisture.

Mature bamboo poles are cut into strips, treated, dried and planed. The finished product shows almost uniform lines interspersed with the characteristic growth nodes of the plant randomly visible.

Bamboo is considered to be an environmentally friendly option due to it being a highly renewable material. The plant grows extremely fast and can be harvested without removing the root system, allowing fresh growth. The root system also helps to hold soil in place, preventing soil erosion. In it's natural environment, it will grow without the aid of pesticides, irrigation or fertiliser, all of which keeps the carbon footprint low.

Beech

Beech is a deciduous tree, native to Europe Asia and North America. It is often planted as a decorative tree and grows in a vast range of soil types. It typically reaches 15-30 meters in height.

European Beech yields a timber that is tough and often used in furniture framing, carcass construction, plywood and flooring.

Beech really does stand out, with a slightly reddish colour that conveys a warm inviting charm where it is used for decoration. It boasts wonderful grain patterns with little flecks throughout, really giving the wood depth.

Birch

Birch is quite closely related to Oak and Beech and is generally a small to medium sized tree or shrub. The bark is papery and can be torn off in strips. It is native to North America, Europe and Asia.

The wood has a fine grain and is pale in colour, often with a satin sheen and is one of the strongest and most versatile plywoods making it a strong, beautiful flooring.

Cherry

Cherry is a deciduous tree native to Europe, Northwest Africa and Western Asia. It reaches 15-32 metres tall with a diameter of up to 1.5 metres.

The wood is a rich reddish brown and will darken with age. It has a smooth satin texture and may naturally contain flecks and small gum pockets. It is particularly prized in fine furniture and instrument making, as well as cabinets and flooring.

Heavea Parawood

The most common name for this type of tree is the Rubber tree. It is mostly used for its sap (Latex) to make natural rubber products. At around 5 years the trees can be tapped and the sap collected. The tree requires heavy rainfall and little frost.

One frost can cause the entire rubber crop to become brittle and break once refined.

Hevea Parawood as a flooring material is quite a newcomer to the market. At one point it was common practice to burn the trees when they stopped producing latex at the age of around 25-30 years.

It is now marketed as an environmentally friendly wood, as the tree has already served a useful function. The wood is easy to work and glues well. It has an attractive pale colouring.

Jatoba

Jatoba is a tree most often found in the Caribbean, Central or South America. It is often referred to as Brazilian cherry or South American cherry, but is in fact not even related to the cherry tree. It produces a orange sticky gum, that converts to amber through a chemical process that may take millions of years.

It is a very hard species of wood and features a tan colouring with black accent stripes that over time turn a deep, rich red colour.

Maple

Maple is mostly native to Asia, but a number of species also grow in Europe, North Africa and North America.

The tree reaches between 10-45m in height with some remaining as shrubs less than 10m tall with many trunks at ground level.

Homeowners plant maples, as it is a very attractive tree to look at. The sugar maple is also used to produce Sweet maple syrup. It takes about 40 litres of maple sap to make 1 litre of syrup. Dried maple chips are often used for smoking food to give it a unique taste.

The maple wood is highly prized and attractive with many patterns and colours throughout. Often the patterning cannot be determined until the tree is sawn, but the finished result can have beautiful rippling or stripes. Maple can be fairly pale or reddish in colour.

Merbau

Merbau is a member of the pea family and is found in the Indo-pacific areas. From Tanzania and Madagascar, through India and Australia.

It grows to around 50m tall and inhabits mangrove swamps.

The timber is very durable and resistant to termites making it highly valued flooring.

It is a rich dark colour and often has an attractive gold fleck running through the grain.

Walnut

Walnut is normally found from Southeast Europe to Japan and from Southeast Canada to California, down to Argentina.

The tree tends to vary in height from 10-40 metres and the nuts it produces are enjoyed the world over.

The timber is very attractive. It is hard, tight grained and polishes to a very smooth finish. The colour ranges from creamy white to a dark chocolate, but when air-dried can become a rich purplish brown.

Walnut has been the wood of choice for making gun stocks and decorating furniture for years.

Walnut is very attractive with lots of detail throughout the rich colouring, making it a lovely feature if used as flooring.

Wenge

Wenge is a Tropical timber, which is very heavy and hard making it ideal for flooring and staircases.

It is very dark and rich in colour with a strong grain pattern and is popular in wood turning due to its stability and the contrast that can be achieved with paler woods.