The way the flooring industry has evolved, it’s hard to believe that there was a time that pretty much all hardwood flooring was wide plank flooring by today’s standards. Currently, with so much strip flooring being produced, mostly in the 2 1/4″ to 3 1/4″ range, those who want something extraordinary often set out to find something at least a little wider, hence the search for wide plank flooring begins.
What is wide plank flooring?
The answer to that question is kind of a gray area, depending on who you ask really. In certain regions, and/or according to certain manufacturers, you might say anything 4 inches or wider is considered “wide plank” flooring. I would have to disagree. I think anything that is 4 inches or wider is certainly considered “plank” flooring, but Wide plank flooring? That would be a little stretch of the imagination. But again, there is probably not a “right” or “wrong” answer to the question “what is wide plank flooring?”
That being said, in my opinion, any wood flooring that is 6 inches wide, or wider, is truly Wide Plank Flooring. I don’t care if it’s solid hardwood, engineered hardwood, or even softwood (like wide pine flooring), generally speaking, wide plank flooring is plank flooring that is 6 inches wide or wider.
Why should I choose wide plank flooring?
Wide plank flooring can achieve a number of different aesthetic goals, depending on what your project is. For example, if you are trying to reproduce an old colonial home in New England, you may very well be needing Wide Plank Eastern White Pine flooring to make that goal a reality. Or if you’re trying to bring a Penthouse suite up to date, you might want to ditch the old strip flooring, and opt for a Wide Plank Rift White Oak floor with some contemporary appeal to it. Whatever your project is, Wide Plank floors will certainly make your project quite a bit more appealing than that strip flooring you see over at the neighbor’s house.
Another area of consideration when debating whether or not to use wide plank flooring, is ease of installation. For example, if you’ve ever installed any strip flooring, you know that getting across a 20 foot wide room requires some pretty intense labor when you’re working with 2 1/4 inch wide material! How much more quickly could that job get done using 8″ Wide Plank Hickory flooring, or even 20″ Wide Plank Eastern White Pine flooring? Imagine how quickly that same room would get done, when each plank is 4, or even 9 times wider!
So if you’re an installer, you can see the increased profitability of a wide plank job verses a strip flooring job, and if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, you can see how wide plank flooring can turn a 5 day project into a weekend project.
Won’t wide plank flooring just buckle and warp?
If you do your homework, and talk to the right people, you can find the right wide plank floor that is right for you, for nearly any climate your project may be located in. For example, it is very common to find plank flooring that is 20″ wide in New England, where that same flooring might not last a week in Florida without cupping or in some way distorting from it’s original shape. With the possibility of wide plank engineered hardwood flooring being manufactured up to 12 inches wide, and perhaps even wider, we can now offer wide plank flooring in places where it was once thought impossible. That’s not to say that there is a wide plank flooring option for EVERY situation, but generally speaking, for most climates, there is a proper wide plank wood floor available that will not fail after installation.
What kind of wide plank flooring is available?
We have found that nearly any kind of hardwood and softwood that is commonly used for flooring, can be, and has been used to make wide plank flooring. While wide plank oak flooring, and wide plank hickory floors are very readily available, we can also very easily obtain wide plank walnut, cherry, hard maple, pecan, ash, beech, pine, sugar maple, birch and even wide plank exotic hardwoods like Brazilian cherry, African wenge, santos mahogany, genuine mahogany, Brazilian walnut, and more.
You can browse hundreds of wide plank flooring products on our website where you can learn a ton about flooring and save hundreds when you buy from us at wholesale prices!
