Flooring Way

Bamboo is now being used to make quality wood floors in many North American homes. Bamboo laminate flooring is both an excellent building material and environmentally friendly; bamboo is easily renewable and matures in only five years. It is durable, strong, hard, and dimensionally stable.

Grown in China and Southeast Asia, the many species of bamboo being used for bamboo laminate flooring are harvested after four or five years, cut into strips, dried in the sun, and then laminated either vertically or horizontally into two- or three-layer pieces. Horizontally laminated planks are referred to as “face grained,” and vertically laminated planks are “vertically grained.” Planks vary by color, which usually comes in natural shade or carbonized (darker). Carbonized bamboo is treated with heat to give it a more amber color.

After the initial processing, the bamboo laminate flooring planks are cut into various sizes and finished with a stain. Typical finishes include; no-stain (a natural look and color), glossy (distinct shine), and matte (mottled appearance). Matte-finished laminate bamboo flooring is typically more scratch-resistant than the glossy finish. Unfinished or no-stain flooring gives the buyer more choices for finishing the flooring.

Bamboo flooring installs in the same manner as standard hardwood flooring. It can be glued to the subflooring, installed over plywood and particleboard, or nailed with a nail gun (pneumatic nail guns are preferred). After installation, laminate bamboo flooring is as easy to care for as typical hardwood floors. Entrance mats for dirt, daily dusting/sweeping, and quick cleaning of spills is all that is necessary for long-lasting, beautiful bamboo flooring.

Not to be confused with the bamboo mats that are strung together out of thinly sliced bamboo reeds, bamboo flooring is a high-quality option to make an aesthetically pleasing, beautiful floor in any home or office. Besides the benefit of helping the environment, a laminate bamboo flooring also adds a stylish, beautiful floor that will add value to your property and last for many years.

Flooring professionals are always looking to source flooring to their commercial and residential clients that will stand as being both visually attractive as well as long-lasting. Homeowners are looking for these benefits too, but many people are becoming more and more aware of the issues of renewability and the protection of the environment. This awareness has caused many people to seek alternate sources of flooring materials that will still serve the needs of look and practicality, but with the added benefit of sustainability of natural resources. One of the most popular choices for these reasons remains to be bamboo flooring. Bamboo is noted for hardness, beauty, variety, and its "green" friendly nature. But, how exactly is it made, how many types are there, and just what makes it so renewable anyway?

A common error some make about bamboo is that it is a type of hardwood. Not to be confused with common associations of many species of grass, bamboo is actually a type of grass which matures into a material that can rival the hardness of maple! Being well adapted to the environment in which bamboo commonly grows, each bamboo plant thrives in areas of fair to poor soil quality, and still remains to be one of the fastest growing plants in the world. Controlled harvesting of the bamboo plant has very little impact on each individual stalk, which will continue to grow long after harvesting. This is what makes bamboo such a renewable source of flooring material, and why it is often associated with environmentally minded choices for flooring. The fact that it is such a uniquely attractive flooring option makes bamboo flooring an extremely beneficial choice for your own interior environment!

Once the bamboo has been harvested, the outer layer of green "skin" is removed and each stalk is cut into lengthwise strips or "fillets". These curved fillets of bamboo are milled along their outer edges in order to flatten them. The excess elements of this process will go into another type of bamboo flooring that is called "strand-woven bamboo flooring" - more on that later. The flattened strips of bamboo are then kiln dried in order to remove the natural moisture in the bamboo, and are then boiled. The bamboo fillets are now ready to be glued together to make a solid, dependable surface that is more than suitable for flooring. The bamboo undergoes one final compression stage, which makes it that much more durable and ready to ship. Tongue and groove elements are added in order to make an installation as easy as possible. It should be mentioned that the outcome of this manufacturing process is dependent on which kind of bamboo flooring is being made. There are several types of bamboo flooring, both in terms of cut and of color, and some differences in how they are processed.