Bamboo Flooring History over the Ages

Though bamboo has been known to mankind for over 5000 years its usage as a flooring material is pretty recent. It was the Ming dynasty of China (the all time kingdom of bamboo) that first advocated the use of bamboo bedding and flooring. This was during the period between 1368 A.D. and 1644 A.D. However, despite being a renewable resource with hardness, durability and aesthetics comparable with hardwoods bamboo found a limited application as a flooring material.

Bamboo Flooring Reaching the US

Flooring material made of bamboo made a late entry in the US and the world market. In the US market bamboo flooring was introduced in 1990 or thereabouts. It did not get a very warm welcome either. People developed the notion that making use of bamboo flooring would be tantamount to using fishing poles on the floor. At that time little did people realize then that it was not the (US) native variety of bamboo that was being used for preparing such flooring material. It was only with time that it began to be known that ‘Maso’ bamboo variety is used in flooring which is very dense and strong as compared to the US varieties.

Modern Day Bamboo Flooring

In recent times, there has been introduced a wide variety of bamboo flooring products. Bamboo flooring styles like horizontal/vertical bamboo flooring, strand woven bamboo flooring and engineered bamboo flooring have emerged and there are being available color options in the flooring materials too. Bamboo floorings are coming in natural blond bamboo color, carbonized styles and stained bamboo flooring styles too.

The specialized bamboo floorings of the day are being looked upon as a special green builder material. These are durable, moisture and spill resistant and strong flooring material. This offers resistance to denting too and is very easy to clean and take care of.