Sustainability & Environment

Wooden floors: a sustainable and healthy flooring choice

17 Mar 2023

Leestijd 6 minutes

uipkes

Sustainable wooden floor in the living room
Foto: Uipkes

A wooden floor is a sustainable and healthy choice for floor covering. In this blog article we tell you why.

Sustainability and healthy living

More and more people find sustainability and healthy living important. Healthy food products, sports subscriptions and solar panels are being bought en masse. But the floor? Unfortunately, this is often overlooked.

A shame, because the different types of floors are not all equally sustainable and healthy. The best example of this is PVC flooring. The production of this type of floor is anything but environmentally friendly, and the floor can also contain harmful substances.

On the other hand, a wooden floor is a sustainable and healthy flooring choice.

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Why is a wooden floor sustainable?

Wood is a natural product and is renewable. By buying a floor made of wood that comes from sustainably managed forests, you contribute to a sustainable world and to the preservation of our forests.
A wooden floor, if properly maintained, can last a lifetime. This means you don't have to buy a new floor every time. This is not only good for the environment, but also for your wallet.
If the floor color is no longer to your liking over time, you can sand the floor and finish it with a new colour. No other floor type offers this advantage.
A wooden floor in the form of engineered wood flooring has a low heat resistance and hardly reacts to fluctuations in temperature or moisture content. This allows you to combine the floor with underfloor heating without any problems. Underfloor heating is a sustainable way of heating. A sustainable wooden floor with underfloor heating is therefore a double benefit.
A wooden floor on underfloor heating also offers advantages for people who are sensitive to dust and/or have vulnerable lungs and allergies. By using underfloor heating as the main heating, you can remove dusty radiators. In addition, molds are less likely to develop because underfloor heating ensures a low humidity. Also, wooden floors do not release harmful substances when you heat them, unlike PVC floors, for example.
Because a wooden floor lasts a very long time and is easy to refinish, you can see a wooden floor as a long-term investment that increases the value of your home.

A sustainable wooden floor is made of heartwood

If you start looking for wooden floors, you will soon find out that the prices of the different providers can vary considerably. From a square meter price of over a hundred Euros to prices of around 20 Euros.

The large price differences can usually be explained by the wood from which the floor is made, but also because some suppliers show prices excluding VAT, subfloor, glue and installation, while others show a total m2 price, as is the case with Uipkes. So take a good look at what is included in a m2 price of wooden floors.

Cheap wood floors are usually made from sapwood. In other words, the wood that is between the core and the bark of the tree and is naturally not that strong. Oak floorboards are also sometimes supplied that are composed of wood from different parts of the world, which gives you a difference in the appearance and strength of the floorboards.

High quality wooden floors are made from heartwood. Heartwood is much stronger than sapwood and also has a nicer grain. All Uipkes floors are made of heartwood. In addition, we only use wood that comes from sustainably managed forests.

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Wooden floor on underfloor heating without radiators is a healthy choice

Why is wood a healthy flooring choice?

Our wooden floors are finished with organic linseed oil, so you don't have to worry about harmful substances that, as indicated earlier, can be released with PVC floors.

Good to know: laminate floors can also contain harmful substances. To keep the different layers of which laminate is built together, they are glued together. Formaldehyde can be released when using some adhesives. According to the EPA (PDF), the amount of harmful substances released from laminate decreases over time.

Fortunately, European legislation only allows the sale of laminate that releases so little formaldehyde that it is not harmful to your health. Nevertheless, as far as we are concerned, it is still not a good idea that harmful substances are released through the floor at all.

And carpet? As far as we are concerned, that is not an option, because dust and dirt quickly accumulate in carpet. You will not be bothered by this with a wooden floor.

Get inspiration for your new sustainable wooden floor

Uipkes' sustainable wooden floors are available in 90 exclusive colors and 17 different installation patterns. There is a matching wooden floor for every interior style. Be inspired and visit one of our showrooms in Alphen aan den Rijn, Amsterdam or Naarden. Also order our free inspiration magazine with numerous examples of beautiful wooden floors.

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