Why Having Hardwood Flooring in Your Bathroom Isn’t a Good Idea

A hardwood floor will always have a timeless and elegant appeal to it, they are a great way to add a touch of class to a room plus they look extremely stylish and also value to your home.

However if you are thinking of adding a hardwood floor to your bathroom you may want to rethink that idea – As far as a bathroom is concerned, adding a hardwood floor is not a practical addition to a bathroom.

Without a doubt the bathroom can be the dampest room in the house, with all of the moisture in the air that can pose the greatest challenge to a hardwood floor.

Even doing simple everyday things like brushing your teeth or washing your face will add extra moisture to the air, as water evaporates into the atmosphere and as most bathrooms are fairly confined the moisture that becomes trapped in the air will seep into the floor, not to mention if you splash about in the bath or sink, or step out onto the floor from the shower.

A wooden floor is highly absorbent, which is a problem for a room that is mainly concerned with water. This is a problem as the floors are going to absorb the water rather than repel it, even a treated floor has cracks in the treatment and in between the floorboards, if water gets in, it expands and contracts with the rising and lowering of the temperature in the room and this can cause problems for the wood and damage to the floorboards.

Having damaged floorboards isn’t cheap or easy to replace, you’ll need to pull up all the old floorboards and replace them with new fresh wood, as said – this can be expensive!

Good alternatives to hardwood flooring are: Vinyl flooring, Tiles, Laminate and Composite.

Each of these type of flooring have their own pros and cons in relation to each other, the only thing to make note of with these types of floorboard is that when they are installed they aren’t installed with a particle-board base, as this is also highly absorbent and will leave you with the same problems as a wooden floor.