Homeowners should consider wood flooring ahead of any other options, a group of Canadian designers has said.
Speaking to the Canadian Press, Genevieve Gorder, Candice Olsen and Vern Yip, who judge the work of new designers each week on HGTV's "Design Star", all said wooden floors are their preferred material, with Gorder describing it as "the one medium that is eternal."
"It's been in interiors since the beginning of time and it's sitting in our front yards," she said. "There's nothing else like it."
Despite this timelessness, all three added that wooden flooring was at the very forefront of good interior design.
“Wood is both natural and trend-proof,” Olson said, and can bring a much-needed warmth and timelessness to modern rooms. “Even people who love modern style, she said, “don't want a home where everything looks like George Jetson lives there."
When given the choice between real wood and a laminate flooring, each designer said they preferred the genuine article, with the overall consensus that “nothing quite replaces a true wood floor.”
Interestingly though, it's not just wood flooring that's been getting fresh attention recently, but wood finish as a whole. According to Yip, it makes a great material to cover walls and ceilings, while old wooden platforms can also be hung up as art.
"Any time you have an entire wall of one material, wood or something else, it's so striking," he said.
This new attitude to wood is far from unique. Earlier this year The Guardian’s Huma Quereshi said that while the overriding style of the last decade was a timeless mix of “whitewashed brick walls teamed with wooden floors”, interiors styles are growing “more individual and less prescriptive”.
And as hardwood flooring is so perfect for those who like to redesign, refresh or just experiment – it can be retreated with a new finish up to five times – it should be no real surprise that it's such a popular material.
According to The Times' Gwenda Brophy, it's our attitude to how wood can be used here the UK that's changed. Gone, she says, is the “spirit-sapping pine panelling” of yesterday, and in its place a more imaginative – and very grown-up – approach in a number of contemporary homes. And that can only be good news.
To read more about the different types of wood flooring available in the UK, visit Timberland Flooring, where there are a wide range of stunning wooden flooring options available for you to choose from.
