Resilient Flooring

While wood flooring has a rare and natural beauty, it is typically not the most resilient of floors. However, you can get the look of wood flooring with the more resilient laminate flooring. Laminates come in a wide variety of wood-ish styles and resist water and other wood vices like termites much better than wood. Laminate and vinyl flooring are both resilient, but they are still susceptible to nicks and scratches and will likely wear out in ten years.

Cork Resists Water

Lately, more and more interior designers and architects are opting for natural flooring over synthetic floors. If you do want natural, yet also resilient flooring (as opposed to the many unnatural kinds like vinyl and linoleum), cork flooring might be a good choice for you because it is also very resilient to water. That is why they use cork for wine bottles – liquids will not seep through.

Bamboo, A Moderately Resilient Choice

You might also want to consider looking into bamboo flooring. Bamboo sometimes comes with a laminated finish, making it more resilient than woods, so adding bamboo flooring to your home could be another way to get that natural look without the fear of boards easily warping and cracking. If you are finishing bamboo flooring, it is recommended that you stay away from wax-based finishes, and use acrylic finishes instead.

Durable Hardwood Choices

Some hardwoods are also much more resilient than othes, particularly Hickory. Hickory is one of the hardest and heaviest types of woods, making it very durable and quite resilient. Ash is another hard, durable, and resilient wood.

There are also many exotic hardwoods that are very durable and resilient, but many are hard to get as well as expensive. See our guide to exotic hardwoods for more details on the different kinds of exotics out there.

It is important to remember, though, that while some woods are more resilient than others, keeping moisture away from all natural wood flooring is highly recommended. If you do choose to get something other than hardwood, laminated bamboo, cork, laminate, or vinyl flooring; rubber and concrete are some other, probably very obvious, highly resilient choices.

For more information, choose from one of the following:

Cork Flooring | Bamboo Flooring | Hardwood Flooring