Bamboo Floors – Need-to-Know Basis for the Green Decorator in You

When people are talking about flooring, they are usually referring to the traditional materials, such as oak wood, but there are also some other materials to be taken into consideration, like bamboo. The bamboo flooring sounds somewhat exotic and it is due to the color it has.

It is naturally light in color, but it could also receive a darker caramel nuance due to the process known as ‘carbonization’. A really big advantage of this kind of flooring is that is has a small environmental footprint, since it is a renewable resource.

The Bamboo Flooring CompanyEverybody knows how bamboo looks like, but it might be a little more difficult to imagine how the floor looks like.

The bamboo floor looks just like any other kind of floor, the only difference is that a plank is made of numerous small strips of bamboo that have been milled together and then glued together.

The interesting thing about bamboo is that it looks like wood, it feels like wood, acts like wood, but still officially isn’t considered to be wood. Even more, bamboo is considered to be a kind of grass; so there is no wonder why trends consider this type of flooring to be ‘green’.

The material that the flooring is made of is taken from the ‘culm’ of the bamboo that could be considered to be the trunk of the plant. Here you have the nodes that bamboo is known for and that divides the plant into segments.

First the poles are cut and dried and cut into strips. These strips get shaped and then glued together to make up the larger planks of the bamboo flooring.

There are some terms that are specific for the bamboo flooring, and one of them is vertical grain. This means that the strips are vertically oriented so that their edges can be found on the top of the board. This is also known as edge grain.

Just the same there is also a horizontal grain and in this case the strips are horizontally positioned, so the surface of the plank is formed by the face of the strip. This is sometimes referred to as flat grain.

Strand woven is another concept that you should know about. This kind of flooring is made of bamboo fibers and they are compressed together with the help of high pressure and also with the help of adhesive. The difference between this kind of flooring and the other ones is that this is very similar to the standard hardwood flooring.

Regarding the bamboo flooring we also have to mention the Janka ball test that is a test performed to measure the hardness of the wood. This is important, because one of the special features of bamboo is its hardness. The test measures the force that is needed in order to depress a small ball into the surface of the wood. Naturally, the harder the wood is, the more force is needed to do so.

Although bamboo flooring is considered to be a novelty, there are a lot of companies handling this kind of flooring, such as The Bamboo Flooring Company that offers high quality flooring.

Bamboo is not only the sustainable choice of flooring but also the voice of a flooring trend able to revamp the common notion of top notch floors you want to have inside your home.

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