The Oaks (not to be confused with the Hamptons)

 As previously mentioned, Red Oak and White Oak have long been a hardwood flooring material.  Back in the day when men were manly men only ever answering to their wives, hardwood flooring was produced and installed by hand, a single job at a time.  Hand tools, very expert craftsmanship, and a lot of time made every flooring installation a masterpiece.  When the industrial revolution came along and machines began to make people's lives "easier", materials could be processed faster with almost the same precision as the most skillful craftsman.  So now, installers could get their material more quickly, but if it came from different mills it may not have always fit together very well.  Each mill's material may have worked fine with itself, but if you ran out of Jebadiah's material and needed some from Frank's, when you put them together it looked like a Tetris field with high and low spots that needed a lot of extra sanding and nailing.  It also may have looked like Frankenstein (rough, knots and checks) when you were going for Brooke Shields (clear and smooth ).  The National Wood Flooring Association was created in order to get manufactures on the same page with respect to visual characteristics, size variation, length variation, and overall dimensional and installation specifications.  There are also three other groups, the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association (NOFMA) and the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, and the Canadian Lumbermen's Association which basically set the standards for the Grading Rules, or what the acceptable minimum "look" of each grade is supposed to be. The majority of the mills in North America use these rules for their products, even if they are not members of the association.  Some may also have "proprietary" or "special" grades that they manufacture, which will have their own special characteristics, and will also hold to the dimensional specifications.

Since this is titled "The Oaks", let's focus on the Red Oak and White Oak for today.  We have already said the Red Oak and White Oak were different, but would you believe that even within the species they look different depending on what regions in the U.S. they grow?  But I digress....  Let's look at the two species side by side, grade for grade, shall we. Of note is that all the grades have the same structural soundness and integrity. The sample photos come from Barefoot Brand Flooring, a subsidiary of Cummings Lumber Company in Troy, PA (Barefoot Brand Flooring) with much appreciation, and the wood is harvested from the Appalachian Region of the U.S. The Wood Database also has some more technical information on the differences between Red Oak and White Oak (Red Oak and White Oak Differences )  

SELECT Grade

These are a mix of 2 1/4", 3 1/4", 4" and 5" wide flooring, placed together on the same sample board.  Most flooring is installed with all the same width, but creative installers/customer preferences have mixed widths using differing alternating patterns which provides an elegance that a standard width by itself may not be able to do for the room.  Notice that the Red Oak (left) has more pinkish/reddish hues than the White Oak (right).  This is NOT always the case.  There are some Red Oak that may display more browner and darker hues, and there are some White Oak that may have a very pink hue.  Sometimes it is the whole tree.  Sometimes it is in areas of a certain part of the tree. As a general rule, though, the displays indicate what each will look like.  SELECT grade (above) will be almost perfectly clear and free from large knots (less than about 1/8" in diameter), cracks, large mineral (brown) streaks, rot and bark.  Minor milling and machining defects are allowed, as well as minor machine burn (where the board was stuck in the machine for a bit of time before it got pushed out).  A few small worm holes are also allowed every 3'.  This grade is the most expensive of the 3 standard grades.  There is one more grade, which is Rift & Quartered.  It is basically a SELECT grade with very straight grain structure and also includes some other unique characteristics special to how the boards are cut from the log.  Since it is more expensive to cut from a log, and makes up a very low percentage in manufacturing, the Rift & Quartered Grade is significantly more costly.

1 COMMON Grade

This grade can have a little more of the natural wood characteristics found in nature.  Knots should be 1/2" in diameter or smaller, no cracks extending through the piece but can contain checks (look like short cracks in the surface of the wood that show up during the kiln drying process), dark mineral streaks, sticker stain (occurs during the air/kiln drying process as greyish streaks perpendicular to the face of the flooring), free of rot and holes, and can have some scant (thin spots) along the length of a piece (not to exceed 20" in a 5' section).  Minor machining issues are also allowed, as are darker machine burns.  If you are planning on staining your floors, especially a darker stain, or you like some character in your wood, this may be the grade for you.  It can be approximately 20% - 30% less expensive than the SELECT grade, which you will probably end up spending close to that if you are going to stain/white-wash the floor, and a darker stain is going to hide most of the characteristic that it has over the SELECT grade.  But, hey, if you would like to spend more to get the same visual, you go for it.

2 COMMON Grade    

This grade can have lots of character!  Basically, it allows almost everything, EXCEPT large broken knots, excessive bad milling, large cracks, spongy rot, shake (where it looks like the board is peeling back its layers at the grain like an onion) and large holes.  Rot that is sound and solid is allowed, as are holes that are fillable.  This grade is for people who truly enjoy the look of wood and the natural beauty it provides.  I mention the word "fillable", which installers use a colored putty to fill any holes and cracks so that, after sanding, the stain and topcoat can seal the floor and also provide and aesthetically pleasing look and a soft feel under your feet.  This grade is extremely versatile in a multitude of stain/topcoat configurations.  I have even seen some installations where the holes were filled with a clear epoxy, which makes it look like a natural knot or mineral streak.  This is the least expensive grade, saving approximately 50% - 75% vs SELECT, but also requires a lot more work in sanding, filling and finishing.   

So there you have it in the oaks.  Oops, forgot something.  Some people want the look of White Oak for the price of Red Oak.  There is a product out on the market now (2023) which just about does that.  But wait.  Before you decide to buy low to get high, let's do some quick napkin math.  Red Oak is roughly 20% - 30% less expensive than White Oak, depending on what width you want and availability.  The new product can add about $0.33 - $0.41/sqft in material and labor cost, plus 1 - 2 days additional installation time.  So if Red Oak is $2.95 and White Oak is $3.69, the cost of installation of Red Oak with the product (assume 25% difference in specie price) will be somewhere between $3.28/sqft and $3.36/sqft, plus 1 to 2 extra days of installation.  So, yup, I am saving some dough ($165 - $200 for a 500 sqft room).  If you really wanted the look of White Oak and brag to your neighbors about your beautiful White Oak floor, though, is 200 bucks over a 100 years really going to matter?  And if you ever want, or have, to refinish.......  My opinion is that this product would be most awesome for refinishing an existing Red Oak floor to make it look like White Oak instead of pulling it all up and replacing it.

If you would like to learn more about hardwood flooring from a distributor, City Floor Supply in King of Prussia, PA has all kinds of information to review (City Floor Supply)