Many years ago almost every wood floor installed was either oak or pine, depending on where you lived in the U.S. These days you can choose whatever wood your heart desires from hundreds of wood flooring choices sourced throughout the world. Nonetheless, white oak and red oak floors are still the number one choice for many home owners, designers and architects. Here are the top reasons:

1. Availability – oak is sourced right here in the U.S. that means that every accessory item needed is in stock. From oak molding to your door trim to stair parts and baseboards. It would be a shame to buy a beautiful wood floor and not be able to have all these accessories available. In some cases, like exotic woods or engineered floors those items are available on special order only, which means a lot of money and long lead times.
2. Cost – oak has maintained its’ price over decades of ups and downs in the market. Very affordable and as such, attractive to many home owners.
3. Versatility – between being able to buy oak in vertical grain or flat grain, stain it to whatever color you like, get it in any width or thickness and choose between white or red oak you’re looking at endless design and color options just with one product. This right here is priceless. Let’s say you have an oak floor that is stained dark espresso and after five years you don’t like the color anymore. Well, just sand it and change the stain color. You can’t do this with any other wood.
4. Value – researches show that you double your investment in value when it comes to putting in oak floors in your home. Homes with oak floors sell faster than homes with other floor coverings. Buyers look for something they can work with. Even if they don’t like the honey color red oak floors in your home, they know that they can hire a professional to refinish the floors and make them look different. That is a much cheaper option than having to replace a floor they can’t work with.
5. Environment – oak that is harvested here in the U.S is legally and controlled harvested. What does it mean? It means that we don’t clear cut forests here like other parts of the world. Engineers mark trees they allow to be cut and that is sustained harvesting. Where you can keep going back to the forest and cut trees while still maintaining the environment in the long term. Did you know we have more trees in the U.S today than we did a hundred years ago?

Next time you look at wood floors and need to make a choice, don’t dismiss oak so quickly. If you look around long enough you’ll see that white and red oak wood floors had been here for hundreds of years and will still be here for hundreds more, for a lot of good reasons.