Cork Flooring vs. Hardwood Flooring

As you begin to shop for new floors, you might have come across cork flooring and are now considering cork as an alternative to hardwood floors. It’s understandable, as many are in the exact same boat as you and want to know the real deal on cork floors vs. hardwood floors.

Let’s start with the glaring disadvantage of cork over hardwood. Because it’s softer, it is more susceptible to gouges. So if you’re moving around a lot of heavy furniture or appliances, you’re going to need to exercise some care.

That being said, that’s good advice when moving furniture around on any type of flooring. While hardwood is harder than cork and arguably more durable, it can scratch or dent when the right situation arises. The point is, virtually no floor is impervious to scratching, but a well-made, well-treated hardwood floor is difficult to match in durability. (If you’ve got an area that gets more than the normal amount of traffic and you need something that’s just super tough, consider strand woven bamboo flooring or stranded bamboo flooring. We’ll talk more about that another time.)

Let’s say you have a concrete subfloor you’re planning to install new flooring. You’re debating whether or not to install cork flooring or install hardwood flooring. First, your options in hardwood are limited to engineered hardwood floors.

Engineered hardwood floors are a layer of premium wood attached to a core that uses several plies of wood, much like plywood. These floors aren’t as prone to seasonal expansion and contraction caused my fluctuations in the air’s moisture content. This is why it’s not advised to install solid hardwood flooring over concrete, as concrete releases and absorbs moisture throughout the year. this moisture goes directly into the wood, sometimes causing buckling or gaps between hardwood flooring planks.

Cork floors can also be installed over concrete subfloors, but you get a couple of advantages that you won’t get with hardwood floors.

A common complaint among consumers and still why many choose carpet for living areas is that hardwood is hard and cold. This you can’t really get away from. And when installed over concrete, it doesn’t really help. This is why many choose to use area rugs and scatter them around wherever people tend to congregate.

Cork flooring is also a solution to this problem. Many don’t know this, but your carpet is the same temperature as your tile, hardwood, or whichever floor that’s directly next to it. Why it feels cold at all is that the bottom of your feet are warm, especially if you’ve just removed your shoes or slippers. Even an 85 degree floor can feel chilly to a warm foot.  Why carpet feels warmer is that carpet has a lot of air and less of the surface area is touching your feet. The air acts as an insulator between the surface and your skin, creating a warming effect.

This is a similar concept with cork, as it has a lot of air and one of the reasons that cork is such a great insulator. The temperature difference to you feels no different than the surrounding area, because less of the surface area is touching your feet. This results in a warmer, softer feeling with every step.

Another result of cork being porous is its providing a superior acoustical barrier. For example, let’s say you’re installing flooring in an upstairs bedroom or a room with vaulted ceilings that tends to echo. Hardwood flooring won’t help this issue, and for many, it’s not an issue. But for many it is and we can all relate to staring at the ceiling and wondering what it is that’s going on up there.

When a cork floor and cork underlayment is used, you make a large dent in that issue. Not only are the sounds not as pronounced because the impact resistance is greater, but the superior sound absorption helps keep it from transferring through the subfloor and into the room below. It also helps in rooms where the TV might be, helping to limit the way sound travels into other rooms of your home.

For those supremely concerned with environmental benefits, there’s no question that cork is a very environmentally friendly flooring material. It’s made from the bark of the cork tree, and the tree itself is never cut down. The bark grows back, is harvested again and the tree lives out its natural life.

On the other hand, when purchased from a reputable flooring source, wood floors can be eco-friendly. Most of today’s wood flooring comes from managed forests and trees that were planted with the intention of becoming flooring furniture, construction materials, etc. There are more trees today in the United States than there were fifty years ago, and while we are far from perfect, the logging industry has come a very long way and consumer demand has dictated it.

Cork floors and hardwood floors have vastly improved, and the consumer is definitely getting a better product, more options, and greener floors from both categories. When trying to decide between the two, you have to ask yourself what it’s going to be like to live on that floor daily, from your first step out of bed until your last one getting back in.

Like many choices, it’s a very personal one and both products are a wise choice. They are however very different and provided that you know those differences, you should make the right decision every time. And if you can’t decide, there’s always cork flooring that looks like hardwood.