Hardwood flooring contributes a luxurious touch of elegance to your home decor. It represents a rich taste and class.
Over time, hardwood flooring is getting famous for its exquisite color and patterns. People are using more and more hardwood floors rather than using other types of flooring.
However, as rich and posh as it looks, hardwood flooring has a few drawbacks. So, before installing it, you might want to check if you can solve these downsides or not.
What are the drawbacks? Well, that’s what you’re going to find out over here. I’ll tell you all the disadvantages of hardwood flooring from top to bottom. Let’s give it a read then.
10 Disadvantages of Hardwood Flooring
1. Expensive
Expense stands on the prime of the disadvantages list for hardwood flooring. If you compare it with other flooring types, hardwood flooring will be regarded as the most expensive one. So, owners must be willing to spend enough money to decorate home with this luxurious flooring method.
Although the reason behind the high price arrives depending on the quality of the wood, you cannot also neglect the expertise required for installation. The flooring needs to be installed over sub-flooding, which costs extra money for each square foot. Getting hardwood floors refinished professionally costs between $1.25 and $4.00.
2. Noise
Hardwood floors cannot absorb surrounding sounds. Therefore, it is loud and transmits the sounds against it. Now, you cannot stay without walking, can you? Well, as you walk, your kids may wake up over the sound of your steps.
With hardwood floors around, you’ll have the sound of tick-tocks of your heels or thumping noise as your kids run upstairs or down, and this can give you a hard time.
However, if you want to decrease the noise, you can use an underlayment. If you install an underlayment under your floor, you’ll see all those disturbing noises will disappear. So, you can walk, run or jump on your floors with no problem at all.
3. Constant Maintenance
A hardwood floor requires a top-notch polishing every 3 or 4 years apart from the regular maintenance. You have to polish the ground properly with termite-proof chemicals. It will work for both cleaning and keeping home away from termite attacks.
Speaking of the devil, a termite is an insect that eats wood and can be highly destructive to timber and wood floor. The maintenance requires some costly equipment that owners have to spend.
4. Water Damage
Since wood is susceptible to water damage, your valuable floor can be harmed by water dripping or water pools. Ensure that you mop the water properly to prevent damage from moisture.
Moreover, lengthy disclosure to water from leaking pipes in the kitchen can damage the floor. If you fail to keep your floor dry, it can lead to discolored and raised edges, along with buckling floors.
If you don’t want to replace your floor in these circumstances, get in touch with a water damage restoration specialist. If the affected part is ordinary, simply dry them by vacuuming and setting your fans on full-blast.
Now, when it comes to water damage restoration specialist, obviously you’re going to spend some cash on him, right? He’s not going to do all that work for free, not at all. So, here you get to lose some money as well.
Besides, it is time-consuming and probably will take an entire day, but you are bound to do it for fresh floors like before. So, if you think you can spare a lot of cash and time, go for the hardwood flooring, no one’s stopping you.
5. Re-Sanding
While the floor is something that can be used roughly, especially the floor of the kitchen, it needs to be coated or lightly sanded every 4-7 years. After re-sanding, your floor will look good as new (well, almost). And again, when it comes to re-standing, you have to do a lot of work and spend some cash.
6. Gets Scratched Easily
One of the biggest enemies of the wooden floor is scratches. Compared to other flooring types, they easily get scratches, especially if you have a lot of traffic in your house.
However, this is not a common thing for all kinds of hardwood flooring. Some wooden floors are more susceptible to scratches.
In order to avoid the harm, you can apply the hard-poly finishing layer to the floor. To deal with light or minor scratches, you can use a coating or wax filler. For deeper scratches, contact the professionals.
7. Coldness
Hardwood floors don’t have the capacity to absorb light and heat. So, it’s indeed colder than a house with other types of flooring.
8. Seams and Open Edges
Hardwood floors don’t have any sealing utensils on the edges. It is installed in its original shape, which creates a possibility of open gaps between woods. These gaps attract dirt with grime and require crucial cleaning effort.
9. No Pet-friendliness
If you are a pet lover who lives with cats and dogs, you might want to give a second thought before you install a hardwood floor in your house. Hardwood floors are pretty smooth compared to others.
Know that with a smooth floor around, padded paws of your pets will most likely slip each time they will attempt to walk or run rapidly.
10. Expansion and Contraction
Wood is a natural material that is known to expand or contract, depending on the temperature and humidity. So, it will react to all transformations of natural situations. As a result, you may have trouble with its shape. However, this problem can be solved by keeping humidity away and by maintaining the temperature intact.
What’s Now
Now the disadvantages of hardwood flooring are right in front of you. So, considering your options, you can take your final decision wisely.
I think you can get rid of these drawbacks easily. These problems won’t be an issue to stop you from installing hardwood floors.
However, I did my part, which was to tell you honestly what you can face if you install hardwood flooring. So, before installing it, think wisely.
This is Autem Decker. Main Author of ‘TheHomeDigs‘. You may not find her on the list of top 10 contemporary Canadian interior designers, but everyone who knows her says she was born to be an interior designer.
She makes her plan in her head and draws them in her years-old diary with a note in the corner. The way she plays with color and shape amazes us.
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