Preventing Dents and Scratches in Hardwood Flooring - A Selection Guide

Do you love the benefits of a hardwood floor? Who doesn't? Wood floors are beautiful, sustainable and healthy. But are they durable? The short answer is YES! With a little education and the right selection of product a hardwood floor can last the rest of your life and beyond - but you've got to get the details right.
The two most common signs of wear on a wood floor are scratching and denting. Surfaces scratches are prevented by applying a very hard coating to the surface of the wood. This aluminum oxide coating is simply harder than nearly anything else it encounters and will shrug off scratches from dirt and shoes.
Hardwood flooring resistance to denting, on the other hand, can be derived from its hardness. However, in engineered hardwood flooring, where there is a veneer on top of a plywood or hardboard substrate, the hardness of the substrate often comes into play. To make wood floors more affordable, the top layer veneer of hardwood is often made as thin as possible. At a certain point, the wood of the veneer is no longer able withstand the denting forces applied to it and will transfer that force to the backing material of the floor. In many cases, and especially in cheap wood flooring products, the backing material is made from soft poplar plywood which dents very easily. But if you increased the hardness of the backer with wood the price would go up, and if you are spending more for harder wood, why not just go with a thick hardwood veneer to start off with? A better solution is to have the thin veneer glued to a piece of high-density fiberboard (HDF). HDF is much harder than all but the most exotic wood species and will drastically reduce the number of dents that occur.

[@scorpio6587]

Great to know

[@cottagekeeper]

How does the HDF hold up in water situations? The nice thing about a sand and finish is it's super easy to fix a scratch, not so much with scratches on a pre-finished floor.

[@tjrooger1092]

My favorite wood floor is tile planks
;p

[@Dave--FkTheDeepstate]

Thanks.
16:55 3-yr old's screwdriver damage -- I thought these types of flooring were relatively easy to replace...?

[@ryan52403]

Where does an SPC core fall in comparison?

[@2brazy4ubitch]

this video got me h-- i mean - uh nevermind

[@miker.5926]

go on...

[@ColeSpolaric]

And don't wear your dang shoes in the house! Fastest way to wear out any floor. And it's just gross