Sales of bamboo floors have been rocketing over the last couple of years as consumers have learned more about the styles and benefits of this hardwood flooring alternative. Bamboo flooring has now entered the mainstream flooring market as a viable alternative to traditional laminate and hardwood flooring due to its multiple benefits and advantages. Let's take a look what bamboo flooring has to offer:

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY

Bamboo flooring is actually made from bamboo grass that can grow to harvest maturity within 5 years. When bamboo is harvested to manufacture bamboo flooring the plant is only trimmed down, which allows it to regrow its biomass over and over. When you contrast this with the 100+ years a hardwood species needs to grow you get a real sense of how earth-friendly bamboo floors truly are.

HIGH TENSILE STRENGTH

Bamboo floors have a very high tensile strength and when ranked on the Janka hardness scale it has ratings slightly higher than traditional hardwood oak floors and about the same ranking as maple hardwood floors.

LESS WARPING

What makes bamboo flooring an attractive option over other hardwood floors is its ability to withstand greater fluxuations in humidity with less warping and heaving that traditional wood floors. Bamboo flooring is better suited for installation in a wider range of climates.

TRENDY

Let's face it - bamboo is simply the hottest flooring choice of designers today. Movie stars and high-end interior designers are choosing bamboo floors over other wood floor alternatives to make an environmental statement. Of course, it helps that bamboo floors really just look so good and offer real warmth to any room.

ADDED RESALE VALUE

With bamboo flooring so trendy right now, realtors are noticing that bamboo flooring can actually add significant resale value to a home - often more than traditional hardwood floors. When you consider the fact that bamboo flooring is less expensive that solid hardwood floors, and can potentially add more resale value to your home its no wonder real estate agents and home staging companies are recommending these floors.

NATURAL INSECT REPELLANT

The bamboo grass plant is naturally more resistant to many types of insects that most soft and hardwoods used in hardwood flooring. If you live in a region where insects pose a potential threat to your new flooring investment you might want to consider bamboo flooring.

LESS EXPENSIVE

The rapid growth of bamboo plants makes them a much more economical crop to grow and harvest for flooring. A similar size forest of bamboo plants can provide almost 20 times the biomass as one comparable hardwood forest reaches its harvesting maturity.

BEAUTIFUL COLORS

Bamboo flooring products can be stained to almost any color these days, but many people still opt for the beautiful warm tones that the traditional bamboo caramelizing process can create in the bamboo grains. With bamboo flooring and today’s stains your imagination is your only limit.

[ -- ARTICLE USE POLICY -- You are permitted to freely copy and use this article on your website, RSS, or e-zine ONLY IF the article text is not changed or altered in any way and the hyperlinks inside the article are active and working. Sites found violating this reprint condition will be subject to legal action for copyright infringement. When using this article you may remove this legal notice -- ]