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What You Should Know Before Installing Walnut Flooring
Known for dark brown to purplish-black heartwood, walnut flooring creates a contrasting appearance in any space. The wood’s sapwood is white to tan, giving the flooring a starkly contrasting look. Juxtaposed lighter sapwood and darker heartwood is present in lower grades, but to create a look of uniformity, walnut flooring is often steamed. This procedure allows the heartwood’s dark shade to bleed into the sapwood.
When added to your home, walnut flooring with light and dark contrasts becomes the focal point of the room, and furniture or décor that is too busy detracts from or clashes with the hardwood’s appearance. For higher-grade walnut hardwood, the uniform color should contrast with the rest of the décor or furniture in a room.
Walnut flooring is not always used on its own. Contrasting with lighter-colored hardwoods, walnut may be used as a border or inlay.
Having a Janka rating of 1010, walnut flooring is a moderately dense domestic species with shock resistance. These qualities make walnut flooring ideal for machining, sanding, and finishing. Walnut, as well, has a pore arrangement similar to that of hickory, but the pores are smaller in size.
Unlike hickory, walnut does not have difficult absorbing stain. Staining walnut, however, is not recommended. A darker shade may obscure the light-colored sapwood and create an unintentional uniform appearance. Using multiple coats of clear polyurethane varnish, with sanding in between, is recommended. Varnish not only keeps the contrasting appearance intact, but it also accents the grain.
If you want to add walnut flooring to your home, solid and engineered hardwoods are the two options available. Unfinished or prefinished, solid hardwood flooring gives a space a traditional and classic look and allows you to choose a finish or light stain. Solid hardwood, however, cannot be placed everywhere, and solid walnut flooring should only be added on or above grade.
Engineered walnut flooring is versatile, allowing you to have hardwood anywhere in your home. Because engineered flooring expands and contracts less than solid hardwood, it can be placed below, on, or above grade. Additionally, engineered walnut flooring can also be added on top of concrete or radiant heat.
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