Ahhhhh… It feels good to finally be able to enjoy my kitchen floor. Replacing the old ceramic tiles in our kitchen with floating wood floors is a project that has been on my wish-list for years. Many swear that ceramic tiles are the best flooring option one can choose for the kitchen, but for me, it’s far from being the perfect solution. It’s cold and hard, which makes it difficult and uncomfortable to stand on. Because we mums spend a lot of our times in the kitchen, preparing meals, cooking them, washing dishes, etc, it was taking its toll on my legs and joints.

We love the look and feel of floating hardwood floors (who doesn’t), but during our research for the best wood floor for our kitchen, we found out that it wasn’t the best option to withstand the traffic our kitchen is bound to see happen. The solution? Engineered floating wood floors!

Different than solid wood flooring (which is made from planks of solid wood and nothing else), engineered floating floors consist of various layers of ply that are bonded together to form a really strong and stable core board, which is then topped off with a solid wood lamella. Solid wood is a natural product that expands and contracts as temperature levels rise and fall, and this is why it isn’t recommended for the kitchen as heat and steam are a must there.

Engineered floating wood flooring, on the other hand, simply doesn’t expand or contract to the same extent as solid wood flooring, and this factor makes it able to withstand pretty much whatever a busy kitchen throws at it. In addition to that, engineered floating wood floors look just like real wood flooring.

A few years ago, it was reasonably easy to spot the difference between engineered wood flooring and solid, but this is no longer the case. While shopping for our floor, the quality engineered wood floors we saw made it really difficult to tell whether they were or not solid wood.

We were also amazed by the wide selection of these floors available on the market. There is everything from the most modern almost white or black floors to even antique looking ones. We ended up choosing a reclaimed wild oak with a 3mm solid oak wear layer that can be rejuvenated many times over the lifetime of the floor. The floor also features the same beautiful natural characteristics of grains, knots and lines that come with solid wood floor.

And the final factor that really made me happy for choosing this floor is that it is a more sustainable option. We sure saved many trees from having to be cut to produce our flooring.