Friday, December 26, 2008

Hardwood Floor Inlays

Hardwood floors with distinctive inlaid designs are now more popular than ever. Hardwood floor inlays are a great way to increase the visual appeal in a room. They can be used to create a room's focal point or used as a decorative accent. Hardwood inlays and borders allow you to personalize your home with designs as intricate as a map of a favorite vacation, or as simple as checkerboards, stripes and other geometric patterns.

Inlaid borders can be put in virtually any room in your house and used for several purposes. They are commonly used as a separation between flooring styles, a divider between rooms, as an outline of furniture groupings or to add a distinctive accent around certain areas of a room. The decorative style you choose will enhance the character of the room and create a dramatic effect.

Different species of hardwoods can be used with hardwood floor inlays. Examples include maple, birch, walnut, cherry, ash. Different species offer their own unique grain and color variation. The wood can also be unfinished or finished. Unfinished or finished hardwood inlays can be cut to the exact thickness of the hardwood floor they will be set into. However, the choices do not end there. Inlays can also combine the richness of hardwoods inlaid with other materials such as ceramic, stone, marble, or even leather. Keep in mind, mixed material floors raise special cleaning concerns.

Installation can either be handled in the old fashioned way (hand and scroll saw) or with new technological advances that use computers. With computers, a laser-cutting technology is used to create inlays out of any design that you can draw. Keep in mind, inlays with mixed materials can be tricky to install and are typically best left to professionals, especially for more complicated jobs.

Source : http://www.flooringkey.com

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