Many people favor the look of natural hardwood flooring over that of shiny, finished hardwood floors or other types such as laminate wood flooring, slate flooring, bamboo flooring or even cork flooring.

Hardwood flooring has always been the first choice for most home builders, except in warmer climates like Arizona, Florida or Texas. Even today hardwood floors are replacing tiles in these geographical areas. The hard wood floor is more versatile, in that you can refinish them to a different color or gloss. They do require more care in the long term than tile floors but only need to be refinished ever 10 years or so.

Even if you plan to finish your floors with a high gloss or shine, you should know that there's no problem with the thickness, even though the amount of dents and gouges that occur over a long period of time will certainly add character to your hardwood floor once you seal it up with finish. Since hard wood floors can easily last in excess of one hundred years, I've personally refinished hardwood floors dating back to the pilgrims! In fact, a pilgrim might have even laid the floors.

There's really nothing to worry about when it comes to giving your wood floors a prematurely aged look. Hard wood floors are made thickly enough that they can withstand years of sanding. This of course is the huge difference between natural hardwood flooring and laminate flooring. One can easily see the difference in durability and quality.

Before finishing a hardwood floor, or just to rid it of large dents, it may be sanded as often as necessary. As distressed hard wood flooring makes a huge comeback, people everywhere are pounding, scraping and denting their perfectly brand new hardwood floors. To some it may seem ironic or just downright silly to spend money on a new floor just to turn around and make it look old? You can even buy pre-dented, gouged hardwood and eliminate this chore. It's simply a way to save time in their busy lifestyles.

Some other hardwood floors include such wood as hickory, oak and cherry woods. Hickory wood flooring is more durable than standard hardwood floors that are traditionally made of a variety of hard woods, and comparably strong as other single species hardwood floors. However, oak is by far the most popular and is very durable.

For sheer beauty cherry hardwood flooring can't be beat. It is slightly softer than oak or hickory and is susceptible to denting or gouging. The same can be said for pine, other than hard pine such as yellow pine. Whatever hardwood flooring you choose it they all will give you years of pleasure and home beauty.