Wide plank flooring and engineered flooring are more popular now than ever before. However, wide floors can create a few issues. Solid flooring boards can move quite a bit.  This depends on the amount of moisture in your home. In the winter, when the air is drier, solid wood floors will shrink. Then, when there’s more moisture in the air, like in the spring or summer, they will expand. The wider the planks are, the greater the likelihood that problems will occur.

Individual boards cannot be too tight or too loose. If they are too tight, your floor might buckle. If they are too loose, the spaces between the boards will be too wide in the winter. Installers with this level of experience can be hard to find. But, finding a good installer is very important.

Engineered flooring is made of multiple layers of wood. These layers are bonded together with adhesives under heat and high pressure. This makes engineered flooring much stronger and unaffected by moisture issues. It will not shrink or expand significantly and is therefore much more stable than solid flooring. 

Further, one solid plank can make four or five engineered planks. So, engineering is a far more efficient and conservative use of the resource. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that engineered floors can be installed almost anywhere. 

Engineered floors can be nailed, glued, or floated. These qualities give engineered wide planks a tremendous advantage over other types of construction. Once engineered floors are installed, no one can tell whether they are solids or not. Both look the same. Engineered floors can be sanded and refinished just like solid floors. So, visually, there is little difference between solid floors and engineered floors.