Selecting species

When deciding on what timber floor to purchase, shop around and remember that there is a large variety of timber species, colours and features available. Timber floors will last you a lifetime if properly maintained so don't always use price as a guide, take note of the hardness and also the deco you currently have and the deco you would like to have in the future.

Since timber is a natural product, it may have a wide variety of natural features and colour variation within the one species. Every floor will be unique and may well vary from timber samples or showroom displays.

Sapwood of many native species is much lighter in colour than the adjacent heartwood.
Some manufacturers may also group a number of similarly featured species together and give that grouping a marketing name unique to that supplier. Where this is the case, reference will need to be made to the producer or supplier to nominate these species if required.

Hardness indicates a species' resistance to indentation and abrasion, this is measured using the janka rating.

What is Janka rating?

As a consumer of quality timber flooring, you naturally want to know how the product you are thinking about purchasing will withstand wearing and dents. The Janka hardness rating is your standard measurement for this purpose. The Janka test is conducted by measuring the force needed to lodge a .444-inch steel ball into the timber species to a depth of half the ball's diameter. The higher the rating, the harder is the species of the timber.

The table below includes a ‘Janka' rating of all timbers listed. As a general guide: