Are you considering bamboo flooring for your upcoming renovation? Bamboo floors have become a popular choice in Australian homes due to their sustainability and natural beauty.
If you’re interested in installing this style of flooring in your home, we’ve put together this guide to help you decide which bamboo flooring is the best for your renovation project.
Why Choose Bamboo Flooring?
#1 Eco-Friendly and Sustainable
A bamboo floor is a type of flooring manufactured from the bamboo plant. Since the bamboo plant grows quickly, bamboo is a much more sustainable flooring option than traditional timber flooring.
#2 Strong and Durable
How strong is bamboo flooring? Bamboo is tough and more scratch-resistant than most timbers and is well-suited to resist high traffic areas such as the kitchen, living room or hallway. In fact, strand woven bamboo is 2-3 times stronger than most timber, including oak.
#3 Hypoallergenic
Bamboo floors are an ideal choice for allergy sufferers since it does not hide dirt and dust like carpet. Bamboo flooring is also resistant to mould and mildew.
#4 Inexpensive
Bamboo is a budget-friendly alternative to timber flooring that, despite its affordable price tag, exudes luxury.
#5 Stylish
With its natural, clean aesthetic, bamboo brings elegance and sophistication to a home. Due to its natural growth patterns, bamboo has a unique character that can vary from rustic to super modern, depending on the style, colour and finish selected.
#6 Long-Lasting and Easy to Maintain
If your bamboo floor is cared for and maintained on a regular basis, it can last for decades.
How to Choose Bamboo Flooring
When deciding on a bamboo floor for your home, it’s important to decide what aesthetic you are seeking to replicate, and how this will fit with the rest of your home. Are you looking to create a rustic, cosy feel or a glossy, modern aesthetic? How will the bamboo flooring style match with the fixtures and paint colours in your home?
Bamboo flooring is highly adaptable to many styles, but having a clear vision of your desired result will help guide your choice of installation technique, style, colour and finish.
#1 Consider Bamboo Flooring Styles
Bamboo planks are available in different styles.
- For a traditional bamboo aesthetic, choose solid bamboo planks. This style of plank features solid bamboo fibres throughout, bonded together with adhesive resins.
- For increased strength and durability in your bamboo floor, opt for strand-woven bamboo planks. This style consists of bamboo fibres woven together at 90-degree angles, creating a more robust and durable floor.
- If you’re seeking to install a bamboo floor on a budget, engineered bamboo planks are an affordable, water-resistant style that is created by applying a thin layer of natural bamboo to a backing material. This style cannot be refinished after installation.
#2 Consider Method of Installation
Your bamboo flooring can be installed in a number of different ways, depending on the design of your room:
- Installed into joists – If your subfloor consists of beams and joist arrangements, you can secret nail or secret screw your bamboo planks directly into the joists, provided they are over 18 millimetres in thickness.
- Installed onto a chipboard subfloor – If your subfloor is constructed of chipboard, you will need to glued your bamboo planks directly to it or float them over an underlay.
- Installed onto wooden floorboards or plywood – If your subfloor is made of wooden floorboards or plywood, you can secret nail or secret screw the bamboo planks into your subfloor, running perpendicular to your existing floorboards.
- Installed onto concrete – If you have a concrete subfloor, you can glue your bamboo planks directly onto the concrete or float them over an underlay. To keep your bamboo flooring in pristine condition and avoid warping, make sure to use a bamboo flooring glue that contains a moisture barrier.
- Installed onto asphalt – If you have an asphalt subfloor, you can glue your bamboo floor directly to this subfloor with a primer.
#3 Consider Bamboo Flooring Colours
Bamboo is available in many diverse colours.
Natural bamboo is the natural colour of the bamboo plant without staining or treatment. Beneath the green outer part of the bamboo is a light blonde or pale gold tone inside.
Carbonised bamboo is a dark coffee brown colour. This colour is created by smoking, carbonising or boiling the raw bamboo plant before constructing the floor planks. This process transforms the sugars in the bamboo plant to a rich brown colour.
Chestnut bamboo flooring is natural bamboo that has been colour stained to an even darker brown than carbonised bamboo. The natural bamboo planks have had a chestnut colour stain added, followed by a lacquer to create a darker, lustrous finish.
Bamboo can also be stained in light, medium and dark shades of white, black, grey, green, red, yellow and powder blue.
Different colours create different aesthetics. For example, black bamboo floors creates a sleek, modern aesthetic, while a pale bamboo floor brings an impression of light and cleanliness.
#4 Consider Bamboo Flooring Finishes
Bamboo flooring is available in a variety of finishes, designed to enhance its practical use in the home:
- Satin-matt lacquer – to create a gleaming finish
- Matt lacquer – to protect the floor while maintaining its natural look
- UV protection – to reduce the amount of colour fading from direct sunlight exposure
- Anti-slip lacquer – to reduce the risk of slips
- Anti-scratch lacquer – to protect the bamboo flooring from scratches
Depending on your unique needs and desired aesthetic, these finishes can help extend the versatility and durability of your bamboo flooring.
Where Can I Buy Bamboo Flooring?
Ultimately, the right bamboo floor depends on the aesthetic you’d like to create in your home and the way your home is designed. At Bennetts Carpets, we offer a wide range of high-quality bamboo flooring options to suit every taste. Call us today or visit our customised showroom.
