Maple Hardwood
There are two types of Maple Hardwood floor in flooring industry: Hard Maple and Soft Maple.
- Hard Maple is used to describe two types of maple trees: Sugar Maple and the Black Maple. Both of these maple trees are used for making maple hardwood flooring.
- Soft Maple is used to describe four types of maple trees: Red maple, Boxelder maple, Silver maple and Bigleaf maple. This kind of maple, as the name suggest, is not as hard or as strong Hard Maple, so it is not used for flooring, but is ideal for wood-worked items, furniture veneers, crates and pallets.
- Solid Maple flooring is usually 3/4” thick, but comes in a large variety of widths and lengths depending on the manufacturer. Different brands offer solid maple in either pre-finished and unfinished states. Pre-finished hardwood means that the planks have been treated already with a stain or sealant, and with some kind of textured surface.
- Engineered Maple flooring tends to come in thinner thicknesses, from as little as 1/4” thick. Again widths, length and finishes vary depending on the manufacturer. However as with engineered hardwoods generally, there is usually a much larger range of color finishes than with solid hardwood.