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Direct stick pre-finished engineered oak floor and steps

Engineered Timber

A more structurally stable product than solid timber in that it’s less prone to warping, this board typically features a solid 3-6mm feature timber wear layer called a lamella. You’ll find the cheaper products will have a veneer of no more than 0.6-1mm thick, but as you can expect, this will not generally stand the rigours of most environments for long.

The core material will be of either a solid block construction or a multi-ply layer and generally of a more economical timber; sometimes even an HDF (High Density Fibreboard) core and a veneer base to help stabilise the board. Here’s where the market is saturated with literally every variation of construction type that makes it confusing to select a product that will meet the sales pitch and last 20-30yrs.

A good quality engineered board should have a well constructed cross section of feature timber, core material and base layer and there is a real science behind what determines this. The best quality boards are reasonably easy to distinguish from the lesser quality boards when compared side by side but generally a good rule of thumb is you get what you pay for. In saying that, expensive doesn’t necessarily mean the best because clever marketing will sell you a premium price for a lesser quality board if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

They come in a wide variety of timber species, featuring many popular native Australian species like Spotted Gum, Blackbutt, Tasmanian Oak, Jarrah, along with a few others. You can buy more exotic species such as Merbau or even the hugely popular European Oak with a wide variety of lengths and widths to choose from.

Then comes the finish…predominantly pre-finished in a proprietary coating of often 10 or more layers of finish. Some water based, some aluminium oxide based, some UV coated, some not.

Then select from a matt finish or semi gloss, beveled edge, square edge, brushed texture, the list goes on and on.

Confused? You should be as the market is flooded for choice. This is where we come in to help you narrow down your selections and choose a product that suits your home perfectly, taking your personal preferences into consideration.

The 2 main installation methods are by direct stick (glued) or “floated” on a 2-3mm underlay. This will be explained next.