Maple Hardwood Flooring Makes Excellent Floors for High-Traffic Areas

There are so many choices of hardwood flooring, and looking through the many samples can be a real adventure. However, when it comes to the time to select one of the types of flooring for your home, the job gets a little more difficult. Every kind of wood has special features that make it different from all the rest. Hardness, density, graining, finishing capabilities, and scratch-resistance are only some of the aspects you need to take into consideration. One of the finest choices you can make, though, is a basic wood you've probably lived around since childhood – maple. Maple hardwood flooring is beautiful, and it offers you many of the best characteristics you can find in wood.

Maple is a wood that's known for its strength. It is extremely hard, and has a fine texture and close grain. The grain pattern isn't wild and showy, but it is still beautiful, uniform throughout the wood, and interesting to look at. The outer layers of the maple tree, called the sapwood, contain extremely light-colored wood while in the heart of the tree (heartwood) it is light brown. Even the darkest part of the maple is quite a light color, the the lightest grade is the wood that's clear and white. This wood is ivory white and kept in sheds where it won't discolor. White maple flooring is the finest grade of maple floor materials that is made.

Since maple is such a wonderful wood to use in flooring, woodwork, and furniture, there is a large demand for it. Unfortunately, it is what is known as a single-growth wood. Once we use up the supply that is growing, there won't be any more of it to take its place. It is estimated by the U.S. government that all of the maple now growing in the United States will be gone within the next 25 years. Its reforestation rate is extremely slow, and there's just no way we can grow the supply as fast as it's being used up.

Because of the unmatched strength and beauty of maple, it is excellent for use in schools, on dance floors, and for other high-traffic areas. Obviously, if it can hold up to this kind of use, it will be able to take the traffic in your home, too, without showing the wear. In fact, the more a maple hardwood floor is used, the more polished it becomes.

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