With so many different brands to choose from, it can be hard to narrow down the best hardwood flooring brands. To help you invest in a hardwood floor that is going to make your house a home, we’ll discuss why choosing hardwood floors is a smart decision, list some of our top recommendations for the best hardwood flooring brands we recommend the most, and more.

Why Choose Hardwood Flooring for Your Home?

Although hardwood flooring is one of the more expensive flooring options, the benefits of hardwood floors can often outweigh the initial investment. This is especially true if you or someone in your home suffers from allergies as dust and germs easily get caught in carpet fibers. 

Although hardwood floors require some routine maintenance, including cleaning and taking measures to prevent scratches, like sticking felt pads to your furniture legs, they are worth it for the beauty and value that they add to your home. And because they’re typically sealed with a layer of finish, they’re more stain resistant than other floorings like carpet. Hardwood floors can also be refinished, rather than replaced, when damaged.

Now that you know why we recommend hardwood flooring, let’s talk about the best hardwood flooring brands to choose from.

8 Best Hardwood Flooring Brands to Consider for Your Home

There are a lot of hardwood flooring brands to consider when choosing flooring for your home, and it can easily become overwhelming trying to choose one that is worth the investment. Although we would recommend any flooring brand from our product selection, many homeowners have different preferences and key factors they’re looking for in quality hardwood flooring. To help you with your hardwood flooring brand comparison, we’ve narrowed down the top 8 best hardwood flooring brands we recommend to customers.

Best Engineered Hardwood Flooring Brands

  • Shaw Hardwood Flooring

Not only does Shaw offer hardwood flooring made from different tree species, such as oak and maple, it also offers textured finishes. You can choose from smooth, subtle scraped, heavy scraped, distressed, or wire-brushed hardwood floors, allowing Shaw hardwood floors to fit any style of home.

  • Mannington Hardwood Flooring

Mannington provides top quality hardwood flooring. A big factor that makes them unique from other engineered flooring brands is that select Mannington hardwood styles are truly “handcrafted.” In fact, they source the finest hardwood species from around the world and a lot of their patterns are designed by Mannington’s expert stylists.

  • Anderson Tuftex Hardwood Flooring

Anderson Tuftex creates high-quality floors that are crafted with care and timeless design principles. They offer some of the best hardwood flooring product options that vary in color, texture, width, and installation method. They also pride themselves on their sustainability mission, having reduced their operational carbon footprint by 50% since 2010 and reinvesting $6.6 million in nonprofits in 2021.

Best Solid Hardwood Flooring Brands

  • Bruce Hardwood Flooring

If you prefer solid hardwood over engineered varieties, Bruce may be the brand for you. Bruce was incorporated into Armstrong Flooring in 1998, and with Armstrong Flooring’s history and resources, Bruce now offers over 400 solid hardwood products to choose from. These products are predominantly available in red or white oak, but some products are also made from ash, hickory, and maple.

Best Brands for Both Hardwood Flooring Variations

  • Mirage Hardwood Flooring

Based in Quebec, Canada, Mirage is a newer hardwood flooring brand to the US industry, first being introduced to the US market in 1992. Over the years, they’ve expanded their product line to include three types of hardwood flooring – engineered, solid, and a laminate-like composite of hardwood plus high-density board. However, at Floor Concepts, we only carry engineered and solid hardwood flooring by Mirage. 

  • Mercier Hardwood Flooring

Mercier is also a Canadian hardwood flooring brand that offers a selection of solid and engineered hardwood flooring that rivals those of some of the biggest US hardwood flooring brands. It’s most known for its wide plank options and being a GreenGuard-certified company, which means Mercier products fulfill cerrtain health-based criteria related to creating a quality indoor environment. Mercier is proud to produce sustainable and eco-friendly products that are both high-quality and safe to use in homes. 

  • Bella Cera Hardwood Flooring

Bella Cera is known for its hand-crafted solid and engineered hardwood flooring at an affordable cost. All of Bella Cera’s products are hand-scraped and hand-stained, making each piece unique yet able to seamlessly fit together. They also take pride in the fact that they only use the best hardwood flooring finishes that are both environmentally-friendly and won’t turn yellow as your floors age. Like many of these other top hardwood flooring brands, Bella Cera is committed to using sustainable and renewable wood sources.

  • Mullican Hardwood Flooring

Founded in West Virginia in 1985, Mullican takes its Appalachian history and highlights it in every product created while also recognizing the importance of sustainability by ensuring more than two trees are growing for every tree harvested for their flooring. Mullican offers both solid and engineered hardwood flooring with a wide variety of installation options, from click-lock installation to staple-down installation.

With many hardwood flooring brands available to choose from, we hope this provides a good starting point for finding top quality hardwood flooring that is also responsibly sourced. Additionally, some people prefer the look of hardwood flooring but want flooring at a lower price point, with less maintenance required. If this describes you, there are also many other variations of hard surface flooring that we offer at Floor Concepts, and we are happy to provide more recommendations based on your needs and preferences.

How Can You Tell If Hardwood Floors are Good Quality?

Flooring for your home, especially hardwood, can be a significant investment, so you want to make sure you choose the best hardwood flooring that fits your budget and lifestyle. But how do you do that? 

A few things to look out for when choosing a hardwood floor is wood that is dented or scratched, or wood that has rough or splintered edges. You’ll also want to pay attention to the surface of the wood – noting if there are areas of dullness or a glossy surface that masks the wood grain.

High quality hardwood will have large, scattered wood grain and a natural scent – one that does not smell like laminate or veneer. You’ll also want to test the hardness of your samples. If your nail leaves an indent in the wood, it’s made of a softwood, like pine, and may not hold up as well as hardwoods such as oak. 

Can You Tell the Difference Between Hardwood and Engineered Hardwood?

At first glance, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two types of wood flooring – solid hardwood and engineered hardwood – as both types may look and feel almost identical. The main way to identify solid hardwood vs engineered hardwood is by looking at the planks before they are installed. Solid hardwood is a single wood plank while engineered hardwood is made up of a plywood core with a thin top layer of hardwood flooring.

The maintenance and care of solid hardwood and engineered hardwood is also similar. Both flooring types can be cleaned by regular sweeping and vacuuming and occasional mopping with a wood cleaner, never water. However, a key difference between the two is that solid hardwood floors can be refinished multiple times, extending the life of your flooring. Engineered hardwood can only be refinished once or twice before they need to be replaced.

Another important difference between solid hardwood and engineered hardwood is the cost. Solid hardwood, with its natural integrity, is one of the more expensive types of flooring. Engineered hardwood flooring recreates the style of solid hardwood flooring, but on a smaller budget. Because they look more or less the same once installed, the primary reason homeowners choose solid hardwood is because it has the potential to last many more years with additional refinishings.

What is the Most Sustainable Hardwood Flooring Brand?

Hardwood is generally considered to be a sustainable flooring option, due to its long life and natural source, and most hardwood flooring brands prioritize sustainability in one way or another. All of our hardwood manufacturers, including Mercier, Mirage, Shaw, Bruce, Anderson Tuftex, Mannington, Mullican, and Bella Cera, have different sustainability initiatives and strategies in place to reduce their carbon footprint. These strategies vary by brand, but include such activities as planting two trees for every tree that is cut down, using environmentally conscious manufacturing, and crafting engineered hardwood cores from recycled materials. Also, certain types of wood, like oak, are considered more sustainable, since they grow in greater abundance in certified forests and are easy to replant. 

Wood certifications like the Forest Stewardship Council and Sustainable Forestry Initiative are an excellent indicator of how sustainably sourced a hardwood flooring product is. If sustainable wood sourcing for your home is important to you, our team is more than happy to help you find a hardwood flooring brand that aligns with your values.  

Are You Ready for Your Hardwood Renovation?

To see examples of the best hardwood flooring brands available, visit our Wexford, PA showroom or contact our team to learn more. Floor Concepts provides local flooring solutions to greater Pittsburgh, PA and the North Hills, free in-home measurements and estimates, and worry-free installations. Get in touch with our flooring experts today!