Wood Grain Patterns and How They Affect the Look of Your Floor
Wood grains add visual characteristics to your floor that differ per plank and floor. Their patterns help you style your home and curate design aesthetics like rustic or modern.
How to Care for Home Floors
Our Hjaelmo end grain floor is upcycled from offcuts and cut-outs from ordinary production. This saves resources and shows how wood can be repurposed to create beautiful floors. An important tip when buying a house is to choose a floor that is comfortable and sturdy.
The way that lumber is cut has a major impact on the design of wood floors. There are several different grain patterns that designers can select from, and each has its own unique aesthetics and characteristics.
Flat grains are fiber arrangements that run in parallel streaks across the face of a plank. Woodcutters create this type of grain by cutting a tree at a right angle to its center rings. This technique produces clean, consistent patterns that are popular among those who want sleek floor designs.
Tips for Choosing a Floor Pattern
On the other hand, vertical grain comes from a log that is sawed perpendicular to its growth rings. This arrangement reveals more sapwood, which makes a shingle or shake less stable and susceptible to moisture. It requires a larger, higher grade log to produce this kind of lumber than flat-grained varieties.
A straight grain creates orderly patterns that suit many modern homes. It also works well in traditional and rustic styles, as long as the grain’s color variations are muted.
Grain types differ based on how the tree’s fibers developed. Open grain patterns are coarse and dramatic, while closed grain patterns are more subtle and consistent. Woodworkers cut the grains of a tree to expose the varying patterns they create.
Characteristics of a Comfortable Floor
For example, northern hickory features both opened and closed granular patterns. The species offers a variety of cut options that produce a wide range of aesthetics for homeowners, from the wavy cathedral to the ribbon stripe of herringbone. This variety provides plenty of choice for people who want sleek floor designs. Choosing the right type of pattern depends on the style of your home and your personal preferences.
When it comes to wood flooring, the way a log is sawn at the mill will have a significant impact on its look. The different cuts of lumber include plain sawn, quarter sawn, rift sawn, and live sawn.
Plain or flat sawn is the most common milling method today. It features annual growth rings at a 0 to 35 degree angle to the face of the board, creating a distinctive cathedral grain pattern. This cut is more cost efficient for the mill, but it does not provide the stability of other sawing methods.
Quarter sawn produces boards with mostly vertical end-grains, making it more stable than plain sawn. This creates a visually appealing, tighter cathedral grain pattern that often includes dramatic flecking. This cut is more expensive than plain sawn, but it offers greater stability and resists moisture fluctuations. For those of you who want to get a house with a modern and comfortable floor design, try checking the property sales website thegardengranny.com.
