With its subtle grain and creamy-blonde tones, maple has always been a strong favourite for home flooring in the USA, and is starting to become an even more well-liked option in recent years with a swing between Scandinavian and Mid-Century Modern motivated interior design – both styles that appear to optimize normal light paired with clean, orderly décor.
So if that’s a style you are interested in, then maple flooring is a good quality hardwood option – On the other hand, there are other points to think about to make sure that maple floors are the perfect choice for your house.
Types of Maple Wood Flooring
If you are looking to buy maple, then be attentive that there are in fact two broad terms used when relating maple hardwood: hard maple and soft maple.
Hard Maple is used to illustrate two types of maple tree: Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) and the Black Maple (Acer nigrum). Equally, these maple trees are used for production of maple hardwood flooring and many wood furnishings products. The Sugar Maple is, certainly, also where we get all our scrumptious maple syrup!
You can add an additional level of attention to subtle Maple floor covering by laying short planks in a herringbone wooden floor pattern.
Maple Wood Flooring Colours, Stains and Textures
Personally, a classic American maple hardwood floor is best left in its normal state, with a clear sealant finish to let the pretty grain and buttery tones to excel through.
Nonetheless, maple hardwood is also absorbent enough to accept stains quite well, so you can in effect modify the colour to suit your tastes, from deeper yellowish-brown tones to sleek greys. Having said that, DIY maple floor discoloration can be complicated and frequently best left to the pros. luckily, many brands previously offer pre-stained maple hardwood planks, so you don’t actually need to go down the DIY staining way, unless you actually have a very unique or custom-blend colour in mind.
Also, bear in mind that there are a lot of different texture finishes on offer as well as hand scraped/ distressed, wire brushed, and smooths, each giving a diverse feel to tribute your interior design.
Will Maple Wood Flooring Turn Yellow?
This is a hard question to give a straight respond to, because it depends on some factors. It is true that normal light tones woods, similar to maple and oak, can go round a shade of amber with age.
This is inevitable as it is partly down to the corrosion of the natural oils in the wood. on the other hand, the change of shine can be exacerbated by oil-based polyurethane sealants reacting to sunshine. Note that oil-based sealants by now give light coloured wood a yellowy tone from the first use.
The resolution is to opt for a water-based polyurethane finish in the first instance, which will basically improve the natural attractiveness of your maple flooring not including adding a yellow tint.
If you have installed maple wood flooring that has by now been pre-finished with an oil-based sealant then you should think about adding blinds, gauzes or tinted glass to your windows to avoid much harsh, direct sunlight discolouring your floor eventually.
Maple Hardness and Durability
Maple wood flooring has a Jenka hardness status of 1450 which is a good bit harder than oak wood floor, the industry standard for hardwood. This means that maple flooring is fairly hard, less prone to dents and is extremely tough (it’s a favorite choice for bowling alleys for this very reason). On the other hand, if maple wood flooring isn’t covered in a strong polyurethane finish it will scratch – and its smooth grain makes the scratches appear more noticeable.
In general maple is a fine flooring choice for most energetic households; however, we advise that you make sure your maple floors are correctly sealed and that you invest in area rugs for high traffic areas such as lobbies and hallways to keep flooring at its finest