What is the Best Wood Flooring for Dogs?
Choosing Wood Flooring for a Home with Dogs
Is man’s best friend your wooden floor’s worst enemy? Despite popular belief, it isn’t! There is a common misconception that dogs and wooden floors don’t mix, but at Chaunceys we believe that having a four-legged friend shouldn’t get in the way of you and the wooden floor of your dreams. But what is the best wood flooring for dogs?
There are many suitable options for dog owners who are worried about their floorboards getting damaged by excitable pets. However, there are some types of wooden flooring which are more dog-friendly than others. Let’s explore the best options for wood floors that are practical, easy-to-maintain choices for homes with dogs.
1. Avoid Softer Woods When You Have Dogs
Both Douglas Fir and Pine can create a beautiful base for your interior, but both are naturally softer woods, making them inappropriate in a dog owner’s home. Instead, we would recommend durable hardwoods such as Oak and European Ash.
2. Choose Wood Flooring with a Texture or Pattern
A textured or distressed floor, or flooring laid in a pattern, can make any scratches less noticeable. We recommend adding textures to our flooring, such as brushing and cross-sawing to make them more dog-friendly. Patterned wood flooring options such as herringbone will also draw the eye away from any minor cosmetic damage caused by the family pet.
Brushed Oak Flooring
Adding a brushed texture to your oak flooring is a great way of giving it an aged look and can also help to disguise scratches. Our Vintage Collection features a heavy-brushed texture as standard, and offer excellent oak flooring options that are sympathetic to wear and tear.
Sawn & Brushed Oak Flooring
Floors with our Sawn & Brushed texture are wire brushed and sawn across the width of the timber to create a rustic, tactile finish. An added bonus for dog lovers: any scratches will be camouflaged.
Distressed Oak Flooring
Our Tumbled Oak Herringbone
An authentically aged look is also an excellent wood flooring option for dog owners. Combining a stylish yet timeless pattern with a distressed surface, our Tumbled Oak Herringbone will make surface scratches difficult to spot. There will also be more natural colour variations in a herringbone floor which will better disguise any stains.
Our Regency® Oak Flooring
Our Regency® Collection offers the character and distressing of reclaimed oak boards and the stability of engineered flooring. Any scratches that your dog might make will blend in with the timeworn aesthetic of these planks too.
3. Opt for the Right Type of Wood Flooring Finish
What is the best wood flooring finish for a home with dogs? Let’s look at the pros and cons of oiled and lacquered wood flooring options.
Oiled Wood Flooring
Sinking into the fibres of the wood to protect it from within, a hardwax oil finish is far simpler to spot repair than a lacquer finish, and allows you to do touch-up treatments to problem areas. Our modern UV-cured oils offer excellent wear resistance and can be spot repaired too, with the same maintenance routine as a traditional oiled floor.
Lacquered Wood Flooring
A lacquered finish sits on top of the wood flooring, rather than penetrating the wood as an hardwax oil finish does, and although they are tough and very wear-resistant, they can be more prone to surface scratching than oil-based finishes. With a lacquered finish, remedying bad scratches usually means sanding back and completely re-finishing the floor to fix them and avoid the floor finish looking patchy.
Additional Finish Hardeners
We can add hardeners to our oils or lacquers to create an even more robust finish for your wooden floors. This is worth considering if you have pets.
Sheen Level
In terms of sheen, if you are going for a light finish, matte finishes will work best for hiding any scratches, however satin sheens can work well too. If a darker finish is what you are after, a matte sheen is ideal as scratches can show more obviously on a shinier finish.
4. Find Dog-Friendly Wood Flooring Colours
Light or Dark Flooring?
Be careful when selecting the finish for your floor. Lighter floors for example show wear more quickly and therefore require more care to maintain the look. In general, darker wood flooring will be more forgiving in the long run.
Best Options: Try Through-and-through Colour
If you opt for a darker floor, your best option is a board which has been treated so that the colour penetrates right through the thickness of the board’s top layer, such as with our Deep Smoked and Thermo Baked boards in our Earth Collection. These boards are practical choices for heavy foot (and paw) traffic and there is more colour variation to better disguise any accidental stains. However, you’ll still need to maintain the protective top coat from time to time to keep it looking its best.
Preventing Floor Damage as a Dog Owner
1. Leave the Dirt at the Door
A mat well or entrance mat is a great idea to minimise those dirty paws and muddy footprints. And try to keep an old towel close at hand for those particularly muddy walks.
2. Pooch Pedicures
Keep your dog’s nails trimmed to reduce unwanted scuffs and scratches.
3. Clean Up Accidents as Soon as Possible
Unfortunately, accidents do happen. If there are any puddles left by your pooch, clean them up as quickly as possible. Urine is acidic and contains ammonia, so it will stain the floor if it’s left on the surface for too long.
Maintaining Your Flooring in a Home With Dogs
Hardwood flooring requires regular maintenance to keep it looking as good as new. Our range of specially formulated maintenance products will help you clean and protect your wood flooring to keep it looking beautiful for years to come.
1. Mop Up Muddy Paw Prints
Use our Eco Wash Care to deal with muddy paw prints. This is an environmentally friendly and PH-neutral floor cleaner designed for use on wood flooring. Cleaning with our Wash Care regularly is essential if you want to maintain the natural beauty of your wooden floor.
2. Keeping Your Wood Flooring Protected
For oiled wood flooring, we recommend our Eco Wax Care to restore the oils in the timber, helping to prolong the finish and life of your floors. You can also use Eco Wax care to spot-treat any areas where the finish is showing signs of wear.
3. Take Care of Problem Areas
Our Magic Cleaner is an intensive bleach-free cleaner for all surfaces. It can be applied to worn wood surfaces to deep clean your floors, removing any dog-related stains or settled grime that was previously missed in preparation for a re-coating with hard wax oil.
We’re Here to Help
Get in touch with our team if you need any more advice on the best wood flooring options for your home.