Wood Species & Wide-Plank Flooring

A species is the wood itself — white oak, walnut, hickory, maple — and it determines hardness, grain, colour and how much the floor moves with humidity. A pattern is how the pieces are arranged: herringbone, chevron, parquet. A format is how the boards are cut or sized: wide plank, rift and quartersawn. They are independent choices, which is why this hub lists all three together — you can have wide-plank rift-sawn white oak laid in herringbone, and each of those three decisions changes the price and the behaviour separately.

By the two properties that are actually different between them, then by looks. Hardness determines how readily the floor dents, and is the number most sites publish. Dimensional stability determines how much it moves seasonally — which is what produces gaps in a dry winter — and almost nobody publishes it, though the USDA Forest Products Laboratory does. Those two are frequently not correlated: hickory is the hardest common species and also the most seasonally active. Once both are acceptable for your house, the remaining choice genuinely is aesthetic.

More than most people expect, and it is measurable. A rift or quartersawn board presents its radial face across the width, and for American white oak the radial coefficient is roughly half the tangential one — so the same board, same species, same width moves about half as much seasonally when it is rift or quartersawn rather than plainsawn. It also reads completely differently: straight, calm grain instead of cathedral figure. That is what the cut premium buys.

Yes — every species, pattern and format listed on this hub, in both solid and engineered construction. Which one is right for a given house depends on the substrate, the grade level, whether there is radiant heat, and how the house is conditioned through the year, so the material conversation usually starts with the building rather than with the sample.