Sunlight, UV and Fading Hardwood Floors

Everyone with hardwood floors knows that direct sunlight can be a problem for your floors. Most of us have moved a rug or a piece of furniture and noticed the covered part of the floor is either lighter or darker than the surrounding wood.

The longer the wood has been covered up, the more noticeable the difference in color is. Why does this happen and what can be done about it?

Let’s start off discussing why it happens.

A Blast from the Past: Wood Floors in the 1800’s

Not too long ago as I was researching information on hardwood floors and finishes during the 1800’s in North America when I stumbled upon a great online library that had thousands of old books, periodicals, catalogues, postcards, brochures and photos… amongst other cool things from that era.

I was pretty excited when I came across some old trade brochures for wood floors from the late 1800’s to the early 1920’s. I thought it would be fun to feature them on our blog to see what’s changed over the years and what information about hardwood floors is still relevant.

A Blast from the Past: Wood Floors in the 1920’s

In our last article I featured a couple of old hardwood floor brochures from the late 1800’s. For this post I want to show you another couple of brochures that I found from the 1920’s. It can be fun to look through these and see what they did back then, where our industry has come from and to see all the advancements made throughout the years.

The 1920’s were a time of economic boom after World War 1 had ended. They were called the roaring 20’s for a reason. Music, fashion, lifestyles, (hairstyles) and culture were all going through major changes. Jazz, automobiles, telephones and motion pictures from Hollywood were all the rage.

It was also a big transition period for housing and architecture.

Hardwood Floor Installations

At Tadas Wood Flooring we’re well known for specializing in hardwood floor refinishing in Naperville and the surrounding Dupage County. But we also offer hardwood floor installation services too.

Usually when we are asked to install hardwood it’s to match existing hardwood floors in other rooms.

For example a client might have hardwood floors in the living room, hallways and dining room but have carpet in the bedrooms and wants wood floors in those rooms as well. Or, there may be wood floors in the living room and tile in the dining room, but they’ve opened the walls up and now need a seamless wood floor to tie it all together.

Pre-Finished Vs Site-Finished Hardwood Floors

There’s a lot of confusion out on the internet about pre-finished factory finished hardwood flooring and solid unfinished hardwood flooring that’s installed, sanded, and finished on site.

Many claim one is vastly superior to the other and vise-versa – usually with ulterior motives. So what is the actual unbiased truth?

Beautiful Hardwood Floor Heating Vents

One of the best bang-for-your-buck add-ons you can include in your hardwood floor install and/or refinishing project is upgrading your heating vents. Most people don’t give them much thought, but they can really add to the finished look of your floor if done right.

If your home is like most people’s you probably have the standard metal vents that do the job adequately enough but don’t really blend in too well with your wood flooring.

Thinking of Staining Your Hardwood Floors a Dark Color?

Lately we’ve been getting a lot of requests about dark stained hardwood floors. Seems like deep, rich, dark colored floors are as popular as ever. We’ve been doing 3 to 5 of them a month lately. Good thing we love doing them!

So we thought we’d put together a blog post to answer the most common questions we are asked about choosing, applying and living with dark stained floors.