Hardwood Floors April May 2018

The Evolution of Hardwood (Continued)

pre-recession era to the timeless and classic Carrara marble’s white-and-gray veining and other similar Carrara-looking composite and natural stones. ese interior design re nements are impacting a majority of our hardwood ooring and furniture nishes. at does include special e ects, some perhaps so subtle the human eye can barely perceive what it is other than it is beautiful and new. Look to the leaders of special e ects, lighting, and accessories companies for these e ects, coming soon to a oor near you. Expect to see more magazine and online editorials about American-made and American-sourced products. In speaking and meeting with members of the media, I hear over and over that readers and viewers want to know where they can nd American-made home products. We can also expect to see darker ma e black accents as the opposing trend to the white- lled, cerused, sliced, white oak hardwood grain. ere will be an expansion of existing trends; grays will continue to expand into silvery-e ects, warm-gold accented grays, and even some more axen-gold clean white oak hardwoods for more of the blank canvas options. We will continue to see our skilled and talented installers and designers create more parquetry projects as herringbones and chevrons grow across the U.S. Homeowners who want to invest in their homes will be speci c about purchasing 100 percent genuine hardwood because nothing else looks, sounds, feels, and even smells, quite like hardwood. Emily Morrow Finkell is an interior designer and CEO of Emily Morrow Home, a subsidiary of EF Floors & Design, LLC in Dalton, Georgia, a provider of hardwood floors and furnishings and an NWFA design contributor. She can be reached by email at emily@emilymorrowhome.com or 1.866.775.3877.

We saw the launch of upscale programs and collections at price points not seen before, sophisticated de-lustered ma e hardwood styles that were clear of most character, in reclaimed grays and gray-browns. ese looks were not hand-scraped, but clean and smooth-ish, not narrow, but mixed widths of three, ve, and seven inches to recreate the look of reclaimed at a ordable price points with all the bells and whistles of engineered hardwood ooring. Consumers were able to buy hardwood looks in new engineered hardwood introductions that historically were una ainable in solid wood plank because of engineered hardwood’s versatility, multi-ply construction, and superior dimensional stability. anks to advancements in engineered hardwood ooring, consumers were able to use hardwood ooring on slab construction, in basements, and over resilient heated oors, and to nd faces in veneers that e ciently used species that would not ordinarily have been available to the average consumer. Homeowners were delighted to nally replace aged carpet that looked tired, nally releasing pent-up appetites to the plethora of hardwood ooring styles. Here’s when we see carpet lose signi cant market share to hardwood ooring, and solid hardwood ooring losing position to engineered hardwood ooring, signi cantly causing all the big companies to shi focus and a ention from mostly carpet to hardwood, speci cally engineered hardwood. We saw companies make capital investments in hardwood manufacturing across the country and the world. What’s next? ere has recently been a re nement of design styles. In the U.S., we have evolved from the travertine nocce of the

38 hardwood floors www.hardwoodfloorsmag.com