Your Guide to Wood Flooring Finishes: Part 1
Our craftsmen work by hand using both age-old techniques and cutting-edge technologies to create a visually stunning result that is unique to your home. Carefully controlled and hand-checked processes ensure a high-quality finish that will last a lifetime. Here, we review three top hardwood flooring finishes.
Matte Finish Wood Flooring
Matte finish gives a natural look and showcases the grain of the wood itself. Our floors are finished using Bona Naturale, UV Cured Urethane system, which is water based. The super matte sheen of the Bona finish creates an attractive, sleek oiled wood effect. This surface finish was originally created for the hospitality industry; its flexibility resists cracks and chips and is ideal for high usage areas. The finish also contains an anti-slip agent and is longer lasting than harder and thicker polyurethanes, providing long-lasting protection to your hardwood floors.
Reactive Stain Hardwood Floors
Our proprietary reactive technologies encompass the art of creating and enhancing colour from within the wood itself. The wood is treated with metal salts, which react with the natural tannins and cellulose to replicate the oxidation and maturing process of naturally aged wood. The result is a unique, in-grained ‘aged’ timber render that cannot be duplicated with traditional staining methods. Double reactive technologies take aged wood rendering to the next level. As with reactive technologies the wood is treated with metal salts to create a unique aged look, the process is then repeated to achieve a greater intensity of colour and further enhance the plank’s individual characteristics.
Fumed & Smoked Hardwood Flooring
The centuries old European craft of fuming and smoking exposes the wood to small amounts of ammonia in a controlled environment. Fuming describes the initial surface treatment, which results in a rich color range from warm chocolate to almost-black. The ammonia reacts with the natural tannins; the longer the wood is exposed, the darker it becomes. Smoking takes the process one step further by ingraining the color deep into the wood itself. Semi-fumed exposes only the surface of the wood to ammonia, in variable quantities, to achieve a lighter result. European Oak, such as the variety used in Floor Art’s Wide Plank Collection, is the optimum choice for fuming and smoking due to its high tannin content, allowing for a palette of rich wood tones.
Stay tuned for the next blog post where we will discuss more wood flooring finishing techniques.
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