In addition to regularly cleaning your hardwood floors, take preventative steps to protect them against dents, scratches and similar kinds of damage. Here are some things you can do: Read more

There’s a reason hardwood flooring has become an industry all its own—it’s a complex and challenging trade that requires an extensive amount of expertise. Accordingly, whether you’re planning to install a new hardwood floor or just want to maintain the one you have, there are a lot of things you need to know. To give you some insight, we asked 10 Diamond Certified Expert Contributors to provide their tips about hardwood flooring selection, design, installation and maintenance. Read more

Hosting a big holiday get-together can be great. Surrounded by family members, friends and neighbors (and maybe their kids and pets, too), you can create a sense of comradery and memories that last a lifetime. But once the sofa bed is folded away and the last load of pots and pans runs through the dishwasher, reality sets in. Hosting for the holidays has turned your house completely upside-down.

Now it’s time to clean up, recover and get your home back to normal. Let’s look at some ways to restore order after hosting for the holidays.

Cleaning Hardwood Floors

During your holiday celebration, your hardwood floors probably endured much more foot traffic than usual. Read more

In the previous installment of our “Low-Impact Floors” series, we talked about flooring made from sustainably sourced materials. In this second half, we’ll cover an even more eco-friendly option: recycled flooring. If sustainable flooring ensures that harvesting and manufacturing are performed in an ecologically sound manner, recycled flooring takes things a step further by eschewing the consumption of new materials in favor of reusing existing ones. Here are a few of the top recycled flooring options: Read more

Flooring is a major part of any home—not only does it provide a surface to walk on, it’s also a focal point of interior design. While homeowners were once limited in their flooring options, today there are countless choices available, including a diverse array of both natural and synthetic materials. However, since every home needs floors, it’s easy to see how the materials needed to manufacture them can have an impact on the environment. That’s why many Bay Area homeowners are interested in eco-friendly options that allow them to walk on their floors without leaving an oversized carbon footprint. Read more

You probably know the importance of having a roof over your head, but another crucial consideration is what’s under your feet. Preferences vary when it comes to flooring, which is reflected in the vast array of products available. From the sleek sheen of hardwood to the natural coarseness of stone to the soft pile of carpet, there’s no shortage of options for consumers with sensitive soles. Along with distinctive aesthetic attributes, however, different flooring styles require different kinds of maintenance, which is why we’ve asked five Diamond Certified Expert Contributors to go over some flooring maintenance basics.

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Regular cleaning is an essential part of maintaining any floor, but many homeowners fail to realize that there’s often a right way and a wrong way to go about it. One of the biggest mistakes you can make in this regard is using a cleaning product that’s excessively harsh or contains “contaminants.” Here are a couple examples of how using the wrong cleaner can have undesirable consequences.

Hardwood flooring
Steering clear of the wrong cleaning products is important when dealing with hardwood floors. In particular, labels such as “finish revitalizer” or claims to “bring back the old shine” should be red flags. Read more