Over the past few years, trends in wood flooring have been heavily influenced by designers and their publications. In the past, ideas were a little stale because the only people capable of influencing designers were magazine publishers. Now everyone with an internet connection can be a designer and influencer. That means that many of the new wood flooring trends are slightly more unorthodox than past decades. One of those trends is high variation wood flooring.
What Is It?
There is also a trend towards lower variations in wood flooring but high variation wood flooring means that your individual planks are very different from one another. For example, a low variation wood floor might involve planks of all white oak with different sources. Alternately, it might be white oak and some other wood of similar color and grain. High variation, on the other hand, involves wood that is different in color and species. So you might have several planks of lightly colored white oak alongside darker red oak and even some planks stained a third color. The high variation is supposed to achieve a few purposes.
Why High Variation?
The first, and most obvious, reason for a high variation wood floor is the look of it. If you like the look of many different kind of wood forming a mosaic on your floor, this is the trend for you. The varied planks of wood serve to create patterns and visual movement without being distracting. They draw the eye without being bright or showy like a bold color or a striking grain pattern.
There are also practical benefits to the high variation trend. If you’re buying your hardwood flooring planks on discount or from a secondhand seller, you might have a limited supply of one kind of wood. That’s not a problem if you’re choosing to go with a high variation look. If you’re looking for the high variation look, you can buy two, three, or even more different kind of wood. Mix and match them as you’re laying down your floor to create the look.
The high variation lok also makes it easier to repair your hardwood floor. If the floor is not made with a pattern but instead has random variations, you can remove a damaged plank without making a big difference. You don’t even have to worry about it matching the surrounding planks.
The high variation trend is popular because it looks great; it’s also popular because it has practical; benefits.