I'm considering putting Bamboo flooring in the front half of my house (which would be the main foyer, Dining room, & office... appx. 450 sq. ft). I'm mainly trying to find people who currently have it & their thoughts... any opinions on Bamboo flooring welcome!!! -thanks
We recently installed almost 1000sf of bamboo flooring in our new addition. (Kitchen, dining room, living room.) I love the look but it was a BAD idea. Although I'd read that it was as hard, or harder, than oak, and it may be in some respects, but it has hollow spaces under the hard exterior which compress easily. It dents VERY readily. We were extremely careful when installing the new refrigerator but still ended up with long depressions where the wheels rolled. It was less than half the price of oak so that's why we used it, but I really wish we'd gone with a real hardwood. Chris
Bamboo flooring is good material provided that the bamboo is of the right maturity. Unmatured bamboo will easily rot. also, make sure that it does not get soaked in water for long periods. Some of the best bamboo flooring materials are from China. You may try to source it from there or from an importer in your locale.
i sell the stuff and i generally hear back good things, but in some cases like the prior answer the surface strength has been questioned. it is said to be 25% harder than red oak, which in my opinion is not true. a because there are only a few types of wood harder than oak and two bamboo is not a dense as real wood. most bamboo if not all (the stuff i sell is) of it is "engineered" which means it is constructed of pieces of bamboo, its not solid like hardwood is. you may have heard of engineered hardwood, same concept. that may be the reasons for some of the defaults. on the other hand bamboo is beautiful and comes in an array of colors and styles i.e. vertical or horizontal grain. it is "green" bamboo grows back in 4-5 years and is becoming very popular for that reason. youll find that bamboo is around $3-4 ft2, i sell it for $2.50 at menards. same installation as hardwood nail or staple, but it can also be (a) glued down, say onto concrete which hardwood is not able to do, (b) be installed below-grade, meaning in a basement, again hardwood cannot. hope this helps, i would definetley reccommend bamboo
I will start off with I work at a university and we have bamboo flooring on one of our dance floors it has been down for almost 7 years and still looks great. Before the bamboo we had a maple floor and we would have to refinish it about every 3 years. This floor gets lots of use and we have done nothing to the bamboo but dust and mop it. The bamboo we have is vertical we have both natural and carbonized. If you research it you will find that horizontal is not as hard as vertical and vertical is not as hard as stranded however they are all as hard or harder than red oak. Bamboo is also a "green" flooring. In my opinion it is one of the best natural floors available today, another interesting floor is cork but that's another story. I think you would be very happy with a bamboo floor. Good luck
