11/25/2025
Posted originally in December 2020 - WOOD HARDNESS
What confuses most customers?
"Expectations about hardness—walnut (a softwood) does not belong in a house full of children and big dogs, for example."
People end up with a species that isn't suitable for their lifestyle. For example: A beautiful yellow birch floor that looked fantastic—until an exuberant 80-pound Labrador becomes part of the family.
Few people in the world would be diligent enough about dog claw trimming to protect a birch floor from the damage a dog can inflict on a relatively soft wood. There is a drastic difference in how much damage can be done on the birch compared with the old existing white oak floor in our kitchen.
The reason for that difference is the wood's Janka hardness. In the laboratory, the Janka test measures the force required to embed a 0.444-inch-diameter steel ball halfway into a sample of wood. Yellow birch has a hardness of 1,260, while white oak has a hardness of 1,360. Some exotic woods have a hardness over 2,000.
The Janka test gives you a good general idea of how readily different species may dent—with some caveats:
1) For engineered flooring, the thickness of the veneer is important. If a floor has a thin veneer, the core material hardness is more significant for dent-resistance than the Janka rating of the wear layer species.
2) "The term 'hardwood' does not equal 'indestructible.'" The Janka test uses a round ball, not something pointy. Even wood species with a high Janka rating are helpless against a stiletto, for example, which can pulverize concrete. Rolling a piano or a refrigerator is going to dent almost any wood floor.
Choosing a harder species helps prevent dents, and some additional choices that can help disguise wear include distressed floors, as well as species and grades of flooring that have character and grain: Wear won't be as obvious on a No. 1 red oak floor as it will be on a clear maple floor.
In summary:
The floor species and type must be chosen with the customers' lifestyle in mind, not just aesthetics. - Written within the Wood Floor Business Magazine
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