How can you tell the quality of a hardwood floor?

The Quality of a Parquet is Considered high if the following conditions apply:

a robust and hardy type of wood
a thick, solid wear layer
a strong, well-glued carrier plate
high-quality workmanship
a resilient surface treatment
trustworthy material origin and brand

In the following sections, we will detail the individual bullet points and explain them clearly so that you never have to worry about being ripped off.

Important side-note: Always pay attention to ALL points as a whole - a parquet may excel in one or two aspects, but if it fails in the other categories, it is very likely not a high-quality investment.

The Six Factors of Parquet Quality

Wood Type and Durability

The service life is one of the most important factors that influence the quality of any hardwood floor. Durability, which determines service life, depends on many aspects. One of the most important aspects is the type of wood the flooring is made of.

Hard and heavy types of wood such as tropical woods or hardy native species such as oak or elm are ideal candidates for durable, long-lasting parquets.

Hard species of wood are not so easy to damage and tend to be less susceptible to moisture than soft types of wood. They usually have little swelling and shrinking behavior, which makes them more durable and more suitable for boards in larger formats.

The trees of these types of wood are usually old at the time of felling. The resulting parquet flooring is, therefore, tougher. Soft tree species tend to be felled earlier in their growth. This is one of the reasons why their wood fibers are less compact.

The rule of thumb: The sturdier and heavier a type of wood, the higher quality the parquet produced from it is.

Wear Layer

The wear layer thickness is a clear indicator of the planned lifespan of a parquet board. The thicker the wear layer, the more often the parquet can be sanded - and the longer you can have it installed.

The wear layer is the top layer of wood on an engineered floor and is, therefore, the "heart" (or rather, the skin) of every wooden floor. It defines the parquet and is by far the most expensive element in it.

The thicker the wear layer, the more "tree" there is on the board. Accordingly, the parquet is also more expensive. A plank may only be called "parquet" if the wear layer is more than 2 mm (1/16th inch) thick - before that, it is only "veneer wood".

We at Ryser Böden only sell parquet with a minimum wear layer of 3 mm. However, we usually recommend wooden floors with a wear layer thickness of at least 3-4 mm (1/8th inch), provided that the floor covering is planned to be used for decades.

Carrier Plate

The base layer (or carrier layer) of a parquet usually consists of several thin layers of glued plywood. The following typically applies here: the fewer layers the entire carrier plate itself has, the inferior the plank.

High-quality carrier plates have several layers of different (mainly coniferous) woods glued to each other alternately along the grain. The arrangement in an alternating pattern ensures a reduced swelling and shrinking behavior of the plank, as the individual wood layers' fiber expansion mutually minimizes the other.

Additional work steps are necessary for processing a parquet with many layers, which understandably increases the price. But, more thin layers are less susceptible to changes in humidity than fewer but thicker layers. So, concerning the carrier plate, you can draw conclusions about the quality based on the price.

Processing and Workmanship

The processing is the most apparent factor for parquet quality and, at the same time, the most opaque. But how can you recognize high-quality workmanship in parquet?

As is so often the case, the details determine this factor to a large extent. Have the edges of the boards been sanded clean, and is the surface of the panels even? If so, you can assume that the processing is very accurate.

Poor quality hardwood boards often have flaws. You should pay attention to the following "quirks":

wood fibers protruding or broken off
excessive use of filler material
unsightly, unevenly sanded edges
oil or paint stains on the surface
dried-up impurities (dirt, hair, etc.)
gaps between the wear layer and carrier plate
brittle parts in the wood
varying board thicknesses (this causes edge offset)

If you recognize one or more of these signs in a parquet, you should pay attention to the price.

If the price point is relatively low, you should assume that what you're looking at is cheaply produced and most likely bulk ware with lousy quality control.

Also, if the price is moderate to expensive, we recommend the following: Stay away! This parquet is not worth the cost.

Quick side-note: There are wooden floors that purposefully have certain "defects" engineered into them. For example, some manufacturers vary boards thickness and unevenly sand off edges to make a wooden floor look more rustic. This, obviously, has no impact on quality whatsoever.

That said, the probability of invisible defects during processing (short-lived glue, toxic chemicals in the carrier layer, etc.) is high if the number of visible inaccuracies is high.

In the case of poorly processed goods, typically, almost every aspect mentioned is inferior. For example, at Ryser Böden, we have never come across a poorly produced cherry wood parquet with a 6-millimetre wear layer - that would make no sense.

Surface Treatment

As described in other articles, the surface treatment type and quality are decisive for a wooden floor's appearance, robustness, service life (and much more).

A good quality oil or a solid varnish can make the difference between "alright" and "wow!".

The finish on a wooden floor impacts the durability and thus the quality significantly.

Should you choose oil or varnish? This choice can significantly impact the properties of a wooden floor, but this is not the topic of this article. If you're interested, you can find out more here.

However, it is essential to know that the price of a hardwood floor, whether oiled or varnished, doesn't change significantly.

Still, the quality of the product that was used to treat the surface is crucial. And, as is so often the case, higher quality equals higher prices. The same goes for oils and varnishes.

How can you tell which surface treatment was used on a pre-fab parquet? There are the following options:

Ask your parquet salesman
Ask the parquet manufacturer (google)

If neither option bears fruit, you will be hard-pressed to find the exact surface treatment.

This circumstance is one of the reasons why we as a company finish a large part of our wooden floors ourselves with oil or varnish. This way, we always know which surface treatment is on which flooring.

There is another hidden advantage to treating parquet yourself: We can use the same products again to repair any parquet damage (even after years).

Brand and Origin

As usual in every industry, the brand behind the product already says a lot about the expected quality. People associate the "Bentley" brand with high-quality cars, right? The same applies to parquet.

You may not know a lot about parquet manufacturer brands. And while that is fine, we recommend that you do at least some research if you're looking to buy a new hardwood floor. If you are interested in a specific parquet, we advise you to research the brand behind it. Find out more about the company in question.

Otherwise, you can ask your parquet salesman what he thinks of this specific parquet manufacturer. Most sellers answer honestly - they don't want to sell you a parquet that cannot meet the quality requirements.

The origin of the parquet and its components can also provide information about the quality. For example, it is widely accepted that perfectionism is pronounced in Central European countries such as Switzerland and Germany. In these countries, even the slightest inaccuracy in cutting wood gets criticized. A similar deviation is often within tolerance in other parts of the world.

There are several factors that you should consider when thinking about purchasing wooden flooring from distant regions. The most important factor, in our opinion, is the certification for sustainability.

Although this factor has little to do with quality, it has a lot to do with environmental protection and excessive clearing of forests. Also, freight forwarding over thousands of kilometres makes no sense from an ecological point of view.

You should pay special attention to tropical woods. Make sure you see an FSC certification on flooring made of such precious exotic woods. Please. We despise parquet manufacturers who do not produce sustainably.

We cannot tell you which brands and countries of manufacture you should prefer when choosing a parquet. It is also not possible to say precisely which ones are the highest quality ones. Only your experience can tell you this.

In other words: You're going to have to go with your gut feeling.

The Mix Defines the Quality

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, it is crucial always to keep an eye on all aspects of quality. The overall mixture of the six aspects makes a specific wooden floor appear to be of high or correspondingly low quality.

If your dream parquet scores slightly below average on one or two points, you don't have to worry. However, you should be suspicious of certain aspects if its performance is well below average.

For example, you should NEVER choose a mahogany parquet that is FSC-certified, beautifully processed and has a wear layer thickness of 5 mm if you can see from a distance that the wear layer is peeling off due to poor gluing.

In conclusion: Don't be too blinded by little things and use your common sense when selecting a high-quality hardwood floor. The overall performance of a wooden floor defines the quality, but a single aspect that is far below average can destroy the "wood floor experience".

If you are unsure, please ask a specialist you trust. You can do that via our contact page, for example. Thanks for reading.

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