Hardwood floors provide a luxurious and beautiful improvement for your home. They can also be expensive, and with the growing interest and concern about sustainable and renewable building materials, many have turned to the fake laminate flooring products.

But there may be another choice to consider …

Bamboo flooring may be an ideal alternative hardwood flooring solution for you. Bamboo is an eco-friendly, totally renewable material. A member of the grass family, bamboos are the fastest growing woody plants in the world. While it may take over 100 years to replace a hardwood tree such as a Brazilian teak, bamboo reaches full maturity suitable for hardwood applications in about 4 years, and can actually regenerate without replacing or replanting (remember, bamboo is a grass).

Typically, bamboo flooring products have had durability issues. Generally softer than the hardwood flooring materials, bamboo floors have a reputation of being prone to dents, nicks and scratches. But this “softness” legacy may be more an issue in the past. New manufacturing techniques have improved and some of the better bamboo flooring products available today are actually quite durable and sturdy.

Consumer reports has tested bamboo flooring products in the past and found the same typical issues with durability. However, for the first time in a recent test, consumer reports has found the best bamboo flooring products actually out-performed the top selling oak.  See the following video.

Different Types of Bamboo Flooring

Bamboo flooring is typically made by slicing bamboo poles into strips, destarched through a boiling process, glued into boards, and milled. There are basically four different bamboo flooring types:

• Horizontal Grain:  bamboo strips glued on top of one another to form a surface.
• Vertical Grain: bamboo strips glued side-by-side in longer, narrow bands
• Grainless or Stranded: shredded bamboo is pressed together with a binding agent. This method generally produces the most dense and hardest flooring product.
• Engineered: bamboo veneer is applied over a substrate.

With the various bamboo flooring types, some of the binding and gluing processes often use formaldehyde agents. These resins and binding agents are responsible for releasing certain levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

By comparison, bamboo products use far less of these volatile compounds than other materials such as particle board (which is far more prevalent throughout many homes).  Today, you’ll find many more manufacturers sensitive to modern environmental concerns have come up with a greater range of environmentally friendly bamboo products.

EcoTimber Bamboo Flooring, courtesy of hardwoodinstaller.com

You may be surprised by the range of bamboo flooring choices you have.

At the lower range, the prices can be more attractive than the hardwood floor counterparts, but durability and quality may be an issue.

With the higher end bamboo floor products, the pricing is comparable to hardwood floor materials, and the durability has improved considerably. As suggested by recent Consumer Reports testing, bamboo flooring durability can actually surpass some of the hardwood products including oak.

For the most part, bamboo flooring installation is similar to installing hardwood floors. But it’s best to find a flooring installer with bamboo floor experience.

And Remember, try to have your your hardwood floors installed toward the end of a remodeling project to avoid your new floors becoming damaged while other work is completed.