Engineered Hardwood Flooring

Engineered hardwood is real wood — a genuine hardwood veneer bonded to a cross-layered core of plywood or composite. The surface you walk on and see is the same species you would get in a solid floor. What changes is everything underneath.

Cross-layering is the trick. Because each layer runs perpendicular to the one below, the plank resists the expansion and contraction that makes solid wood cup or gap when humidity swings. That stability is what lets engineered hardwood go where solid cannot: over a concrete slab, over radiant floor heating, in a finished basement, and into plank widths that solid wood cannot hold flat.

The limit is the wear layer, and it is the spec worth checking before the color. Products in this range run from 1.5mm sliced veneer up to 4mm sawn — the thicker sawn ones can take a light refinish, the thin sliced ones cannot. Sawn veneer is cut like lumber; sliced is shaved off a log, which is cheaper and thinner. If being able to refinish decades from now matters to you, look at our engineered solid hardwood instead, where the wear layers start at 3.2mm and go up to 3/8 inch.

We stock 147 engineered hardwood products from Somerset, MSI, Mullican, CALI and Viking. Prices start around $7.25 per square foot and reach the low teens for wide, long, character-grade planks; the average is close to $9.70. Some manufacturers are call-for-pricing.

If you are deciding between engineered and solid, bring your subfloor situation to the showroom — whether you are over concrete, whether the room is below grade, and whether there is radiant heat underneath. Those three answers usually make the decision for you. We install everything we sell across Southeast Michigan.