Dark Maple Floors

Everything you need to know about dark Maple floors.

For a flooring surface that will add dramatic and elegant beauty to any room, dark Maple floors may be just the thing. Maple hardwood flooring offers cleaner and lighter hues that can be easily stained to create dark Maple floors for residential or commercial settings. With remarkable density and clear, hard flowing grain with occasional swirls, dark Maple floors create a spectacular surface that will be equally at home in traditional, formal interiors and casual, contemporary design schemes.

In this introduction to dark Maple floors, you’ll find answers to all your questions as well as information on how to customize your dark floors at Carlisle Wide Plank Floors.

Creating unique dark Maple floors through customization.

As you design your dark Maple floors at Carlisle, you’ll have several options for customizing your flooring surface to create a truly one-of-a-kind hardwood floor.

Choosing the wood, grade and width.

Choosing the wood comes down to selecting the character, cut, grain pattern and hardness that will best suit your design needs. Our White Maple and Brown Maple floors are available in several proprietary grades that reveal more or less variation in grain patterns, knots and color. Working with the specific grade allows you to achieve a more uniform look throughout the surface. You may also choose the width of the floorboards. Varying the width of your floorboards adds visual interest while maintaining consistent widths throughout a room creates a more uniform appearance.

Opting for unfinished or prefinished floors.

Unfinished hardwood flooring is meant to be finished on site after the floor is installed. Prefinished floors are finished before they’re delivered for installation. With unfinished hardwood flooring, you’ll have to put up with a fair amount of mess as the floors are sanded and stained, and you’ll need to leave the premise for a day or two when the floors are covered with polyurethane sealants. With prefinished flooring on the other hand, all the finish work is done before the floors are installed, saving time and cost on installation and making life a lot easier.

Selecting solid or engineered floors.

Solid dark Maple floors use floorboards that are cut from a single piece of Maple hardwood. Engineered floors have a layer of Maple that is attached to multiple layers of backing material. By using this type of construction, engineered floors are stronger and less prone to expanding or contracting when there are larger-than-normal changes in temperature and humidity. Engineered floors are perfect for installations in places like basements, on radiant heating systems, over concrete slabs, or in houses where the relative humidity has huge spikes during different seasons. Engineered floors are not appropriate for locations where the relative humidity falls below 30%.

Considering texture

Texturing a floor gives it an appearance of age and wear that normally is the result of generations of use. At Carlisle, we offer a number of techniques for texturing or distressing dark Maple floors, including adding hand scraped edges and saw marks, and using proprietary methods that reproduce the look of wood that has been aged by time, weather and foot traffic.

Deciding on the right stain

Choose from our traditional stain colors or create your own custom stain – with Carlisle, you’ll never have to settle for a color that’s “close” to what you had in mind. Our custom color matching system provides a fast match to virtually any color you bring to us.

maple hardwood floor

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best ideas for how to clean dark Maple floors?

Though dark Maple floors may tend to hide dirt a little more easily, they also may show scratches more readily. That’s why it’s important to keep your dark Maple floors swept clean of debris that can cause scratches. Dirt and contaminants can be removed with a simple solution of vinegar (1 or 2 ounces) and water (2 gallons) – the mixture is both safe for floors and for the environment.

What stain should be used for dark Maple floors?

Unlike most flooring companies, Carlisle Wide Plank Floors offers infinite color options, including a great number of darker stains. For dark Maple floors, you can choose anything from the rich chocolate brown hues of Oatmeal Stout, to the pumpkin pine patina of Copper Mine, to the dark roasted color of Vermont Coffee Bean. Custom stains are available in any hue as well.

How hard are dark Maple floors?

With a Janka hardness rating of 1450, Maple is one of the harder hardwood species, making dark hardwood floors more resistant to dents and dings.

What are White Maple vs. Brown Maple floors?

Both White Maple and Brown Maple floors are cut from the same tree, but Brown Maple floors use timber that has developed a heart at its center where the nutrients are no longer moving throughout the timber. The result is more rich, brown streaks and striking color variations in the floorboards.

What are wide plank dark Maple floors?

Wide plank Maple flooring is made with floorboards that are cut at much wider widths than standard commercial flooring. While the average commercial floor uses floorboards that are no more than 2¼”

to 3″, wide plank floors may have floorboards with widths up to 20″. With more room on each board, the personality of the wood is allowed to shine, and the details of the grain pattern are fully revealed. Wide plank floors also create a more spacious and harmonious feel in the room, as there are far fewer seams between floorboards, creating a less busy look.

What are dark Maple floors?

Dark Maple floors are hardwood floors that are made with boards cut from the hard Maple tree and stained to a darker color. Maple wood flooring has strikingly beautiful but subtle grain structure and neutral hues that allow it to be easily customized to fit the needs of almost any decor.

Why select Carlisle for your dark Maple floors?

Over the past 50 years, Carlisle has built a reputation for delivering stunning wide plank hardwood floors. Our custom process enables us to fashion exceptional dark Maple floors as well as surfaces from many other pine and hardwood species. Our New England craftsman have a combined experience of more than 200 years in evaluating timbers, inspecting grain patterns and handcrafting wide planks to make sure your floor meets your specifications. With expert assistance and friendly guidance available at every turn, we make the process of creating one-of-a-kind dark Maple floors fun and exciting.