Using the right lighting can instantly add even more elegance and sophistication to your beautiful, engineered wood flooring. Light enables you to create different effects throughout the day to enhance the subtle colours and patterns of both light and dark wood flooring. When you choose one of our bespoke engineered wood floors, you can create a completely unique appearance for your room.
Light and Patterns
Our bespoke engineered wood floors can be installed in a variety of styles to perfectly suit the unique lighting in your home. Traditional straight plank flooring is always extremely popular and when illuminated. Plank flooring has a calm, sophisticated appearance. In addition, planks of engineered wood can be cut much wider than solid wood. For increased visual appeal, herringbone’s zigzag patterns can look beautiful, particularly when illuminated at night, as the light enhances the different grains of the interlocking panels. The elegant triangular points of the chevron flooring can appear equally attractive as the light intensifies their individual colour tones. Engineered wood floors can even be used to create the intricate Versailles Panels which always look truly majestic in soft, radiant light.
Highlighting a Beautiful Surface
The surface layer of an engineered wood floor is made of genuine timber. It can be made from any species of wood. We would recommend Oak as the op layer for its durability. When used in the correct lighting, Oak is a versatile timber with a fascinating beauty all of its own. The correct lighting really intensifies the entire spectrum of different colour tones in European oak. In our opinion, there are several finishes to choose from including a discreet matte surface or a satin finish. The surface of our beautiful light or dark engineered wood floors acquire the softest, velvety sheen or appear like a glistening mirror when they’re under lighting.
Illuminating the Grain
There is a timeless elegance to the oak floor surfaces. We use a generous layer of European white oak that is sourced from sustainable, managed forests. It is essentially a pale wood that lends itself perfectly to a variety of colour stains to produce light or dark wood floors. Both artificial and natural light sources accentuate the beautiful grain of mature oak. The timber’s slow growth rate forms a densely packed grain with intriguing patterns and very few knots or blemishes to create a smooth, elegant floor surface. When a pool of light illuminates an area of the floor, it radiates out into a graceful, even glow that fills your home with a calm, relaxing atmosphere. On a chilly evening, light gently reflecting from your engineered oak floor will provide a comfortable aura of cosy warmth.
Creating an Illusion
Combine the right lighting with dark or light wood floors and you can appear to magically change the dimensions of your room. In general, your vision sees pale colours expand while dark tones contrast. If you opt for sophisticated light grey engineered wood floor, it will give a small, compact room a spacious appearance. Wall lamps or spotlights strategically placed in a corner will instantly create the illusion that the room is much larger. By contrast, dark engineered wood flooring can easily turn a large, open-plan room into a much cosier haven. Team it with medium colour tones on the walls and subdued white lighting placed a short distance from the corner and you immediately achieve an optical illusion of a less expansive room length.
Effects with Sunlight
If your room enjoys a great deal of sunlight streaming in through the windows, you’ll need to consider its effect when choosing the colour of your floor. Over time, oak in full sun will undergo a subtle colour change through a combination of UV rays and oxygen. The surface oak layer usually mellows to a beautiful, rich tone with hints of amber. In natural sunshine, light coloured engineered wood flooring can be enhanced by the brightness to a pleasant, golden yellow. At night under artificial lighting, the same timber can often appear a much deeper shade than when it was first installed. When choosing dark wood floors, remember to account for it mellowing to a slightly richer tone with attractive touches of copper. However, some wood stain finishes can be more resistant than others to the effects of natural sunlight. Moving your furniture and rugs at regular intervals will help disperse the effects of sunlight more evenly over the floor’s surface.
Using Light to Disguise Blemishes
European white oak is an ideal choice for dark or light wood floors as it is incredibly hard-wearing. Its dense grain is more resistant to everyday wear and tear than that of red oak. However, all wooden floors eventually suffer small scuff marks and scratches. Using the light from floor lamps placed in a suitable position can cleverly cast a soft glow over other areas of the floor surface leaving the marked timber in the shade. The light radiating outwards from more than one lamp overlaps to create a slightly mottled appearance that easily disguises a worn area. The surface layer of oak in our engineered wood flooring has a generous depth. Over its lifetime of up to one hundred years, it can be resanded or refinished more than once, the exact same as if it was solid timber.
Conclusion
At Wood Flooring Ireland, we delight in creating bespoke engineered wood flooring that looks equally attractive in natural or artificial light. Our product is proudly Guaranteed Irish as we handcraft each plank ourselves in our manufacturing base in Cork. Our high-quality engineered wood consists of layers of plywood finished with a generous layer of genuine European white oak. Affordable, robust and versatile, engineered wood frequently outperforms solid wood and looks incredibly beautiful when illuminated while adding value to your home. Check out our blog for more insightful articles such as learning how to clean engineered wood floors. Call into our Cork and Dublin showrooms to discuss your options.
* Please note all the above are our opinions and just a guide.