woodflooringtrends

Pine Wood Floor in a Palatial Setting

These incredible pine planks were installed in Amalienborg Castle in Copenhagen during a 5 year restoration project.  Dinesen, a fouth generation wood flooring company founded in the small Danish town of Jels in 1898, crafted the planks seen here.

Single room length planks fashioned from pine grace the Amalienborg Castle in Copenhagen.

See the full story on this project here.

I’m seeing a continuing shift where clients are still wanting wood floors some texture but not necessarily the hand scraped looks.  Wire-brushed floors which seemed to have a false start 5 years ago are now widely accepted.

Grainy wood species like white oak are given texture by passing under a wire bristle brush. The brush “sweeps” out the softer spring wood giving the surface relief that makes the grain more pronounced.

New wire-brushing techniques have evolved which have a nicer effect on less grainy woods such as hickory and maple but the predominant product being used is European white oak in wide widths.

Close up of a wire-brushed white oak wood floor from Real Wood Floors.

This product could be found at every booth at the Shanghai Domotex show in March.  Every vendor has jumped on this bandwagon so expect the product to be pushed into every retail outlet in the US.

After a busy season of traveling, where I get behind on my posts it’s always so difficult to get started again.  I keep hearing the words of social media expert Paul Guillin in my head telling me “you just have to keep at the blogging thing for a year before you’ll really see the results”.  In theory I think he’s right, but at the same time not having seen the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it gets difficult at times to keep moving along.  However, I have passed some milestones in the social media arena this year.  I thought I’d highlight them here for you.  Maybe it will serve to motivate your efforts and reinvigorate my own.

1) I sold a wood floor on twitter.  I’d have to be honest and say this was not intentional but it did happen.  I was searching around the twittersphere to see who was talking about wood floors.  It seems if you do this search you get predominantly 5 things.  First you get people who are saying varying versions of “I love sliding on hardwood floors in my socks!”, secondly you find people saying “I hate sleeping on my hardwood floor”, then third you get some marketing bots offering Bona floor cleaner, imagine that Bona selling in yet another arena?, fourthly you’ll find wood flooring manufacturers and contractors touting their latest product or install and lastly you’ll get homeowners who are considering having wood floors or those who have new floors asking questions.

I happened to engage one homeowner who had asked a question about tearing out carpet and replacing with wood flooring.  That tweet turned into a email conversation, then to a phone conversation and then to directing him to a local distributor of our products who sold him a floor.  Bizarre.

2)  I sold a specific floor that was highlighted on a blog post.  This was a random set of circumstances where I had posted a picture of a newly installed floor.  I got a phone call from a homeowner asking about that particular type of flooring the very next day.  Turns out he had seen that picture and it was exactly what he was looking for.  I was able to connect him with a local distributor of our products as well and he bought the floor the following week.  Doesn’t happen every week but it was interesting to see the sales cycle and its potential.

3)  I successfully used one of my boards on Pinterest to convince a customer that we had the product they were looking for.  The Pinterest showroom closed the deal.

4)  I was recognized at a trade show as a result of my blogging.  Fame!  Finally.  I was counting down the 15 seconds in my head.

I was approached by a number of people at the latest NWFA trade show in Orlando asking me a lot of questions about my social media efforts and whether or not they were paying off.  I have to say its a labor of love and the results are both difficult to measure and at this point fairly insignificant.  However I do believe the idea has merit for one reason.

When people go looking for a solution to a problem today, they rarely pick up a magazine or newspaper, they don’t turn on the radio and start scanning through stations looking for answers nor do they turn on the TV and start surfing trying to find a program or commercial that will have a product or program to solve their problem.  They do however open up a browser and type their query into a search engine.  If I can provide content that is focused on answering the questions that people are asking that pertain to wood floors then I am going to show up on the radar from time to time.  If my content answers their question then they are probably going to ask me another question and see if I can ultimately offer them a product that will solve their problem.

I’m interested to hear what others in our industry are up to in the social media world.  Chime in with thoughts and/or questions and let’s start a discussion.

Elmira College was founded in 1855 in Elmira, New York. Elmira College is noted most famously for being the home of Mark Twain’s study from which he wrote Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  

More recently, Elmira had a interior facelift that included new hardwood floors.  For the project 44,000sqft of engineered unfinished 2 1/4″ S&B R&Q white oak was produced, including a small portion that was fumed dark to provide a contrasting color for the inlay work of purpleheart feature strip.

This project featured 2 1/4" unfinished engineered R&Q White Oak floors from Real Wood Floors in both natural and fumed tones.

I’ve been on the road for most of the month of April having most recently attended the NWFA Expo in Orlando.  Without a doubt this was the best show NWFA has put on in recent memory.  Congratulations to Michael Martin for infusing a sense of momentum and excitement back into the association.

As for the show and any visible trends, the most obvious push is still towards low-VOC hardwax oil finishes.  It seemed every manufacturer was displaying at least one line of product that utilized these new finishes.  In addition many of the finish companies were touting their new line of cleaning products specially formulated to maintain these new surface treatments.

European white oak in wide widths, a trend we spotted at Surfaces, also continues to grow in popularity particularly in grey tones with low sheens.  All in all, nothing strikingly new in terms of product trends, however the major trend noticed and one we hope continues is good attendance at this show and a sense of excitement among attendees and exhibitors.