When shopping for your new flooring, it’s important to go over all of the bamboo flooring pros and cons. It’s nice to see that people are becoming more aware of their impact on the environment. Like many things, saying they are eco friendly makes sense on the surface of the argument, but my bring up some concerns after a little more investigation. At the end of the day, there is some give and take with regards to sustainability as well as product quality.
Bamboo Flooring Pros and Cons: Sustainability
We will start with the pros concerning the sustainability of bamboo floors. Traditional hardwoods are slow growing trees. It is not unusual that a hardwood tree reach a hundred years old before it reaches maturity. With this slow growth rate, it’s easy to see how demand for hardwoods quickly outpaces the nature’s supply of hardwoods. In contrast of a hundred years to maturity, bamboo takes just a fraction of that time. It takes only 3 to 5 years for bamboo to reach maturity for cultivation. So within the time frame one hardwood tree can be grown to maturity, over 30 batches of bamboo can be produced for flooring. With this growth rate, unlike traditional hardwoods like walnut, oak and hickory, bamboo production can keep up with bamboo’s natural supply.
Now let’s investigate the cons of the sustainability of bamboo flooring. One concern is the clear cutting of natural habitat to facilitate more bamboo production. It can be a double edge sword sometimes, the fact that bamboo is a sustainable quickly growing crop can actually threaten other land areas due to it’s popularity. It defeats the purpose of sustainability if we’re cutting down forests to produce more sustainable crops like bamboo. The other concern is the production of bamboo flooring. The production of the bamboo flooring requires chemical solutions and stabilizers to make it truly usable. There has been bamboo flooring with dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. These types of production chemicals are harmful for environment as well as the people making it. The majority of bamboo flooring is imported from China. China has some questionable human rights practices. This can be another concern for bamboo flooring.
Bamboo Flooring Pros and Cons: Pricing
Pricing is certainly a pro of bamboo flooring. The price can be as little as 50% of traditional unfinished oak flooring. As of the writing of this article, bamboo flooring can range from $1.65 to $4.95 per foot.
The major con on bamboo floor pricing is the fact that the production varies so much, it tough to compare prices. If you see a price that may be too good to be true, it probably is. There are some very cheap ways to produce the flooring that have low natural content and is also low quality. When comparing prices, be sure you’re comparing flooring that have the same production methods.
Bamboo Flooring Pros and Cons: Quality
For many, the bamboo flooring quality can be considered a con. Bamboo is much softer than a traditional hardwood flooring. For example comparing bamboo flooring to Brazilian teak flooring there is no question the quality falls in favor of the teak.
The pros for the quality of bamboo floors depends on how the floor was manufactured. For all practical purposes, bamboo on it’s own cannot be flooring on it’s own structure. Unlike hardwood flooring, which can be simply cut into planks, bamboo flooring has to be laminated and formed into flooring segments. If produced with best practices, the quality of bamboo flooring can be very high, comparing favorably with other more traditional hardwood flooring options.
Bamboo Flooring Pros Cons: Installation
Since bamboo flooring has to be manufactured and finished at a factory, it is impossible to buy unfinished varieties. The pre finished floor segments are all tongue and groove constructed, making it a very easy floor to install. Even a weekend DIYer (Do it yourself) person could pull of installation with a little help from friends. The downside of pre-finished floorings is that you loose a great deal of the customization available with unfinished hardwood flooring. This customization allows the installer to sand on site, giving it a much more uniform smoothness. They also have the flexibility of choosing the final color by choosing the stain color.
Bamboo Flooring Pros & Cons: Aesthetics
As far as the general appearance of flooring, it really just comes down to personal preference. Bamboo has a very unique look, which is unmistakable. With other hardwoods, depending on the stain, to the untrained eye, the floor could be made of several types of wood. The look of bamboo will be a love or hate relationship. There is no changing the look with simply adding stain. The other thing to consider with bamboo flooring is the color. Color is important here, because depending on what you choose the hardness changes. To get darker color, the bamboo is heated. The darker the color the higher the temperature has to be. Unfortunately, the higher the temperature, the softer the bamboo becomes. So if you want the strongest bamboo flooring available, it’s best to buy it the natural color.
As with most upgrades for your home, it’s best to do your homework. There is no exception with bamboo floors. There are positives and negatives of bamboo flooring to become familiar with. Once you’ve educated yourself with all bamboo flooring pros and cons you will be ready to purchase it.
