Solid Wood Flooring in Brighton

The tall Regency houses of Brunswick Town and Kemptown were floored in solid timber, and where a house is still a house rather than six flats, and where the conservation designation has kept the original boards, sanding and refinishing them is the solid-wood order. A new Windsor board goes into a Preston Park or Hove villa on suspended timber over a ventilated void, after a moisture reading in the void and a fortnight in the room.

The reasons against are Brighton’s own. In the flats that make up most of the rental market the lease’s acoustic layer takes the depth a solid board would need for its deck; over a basement the void is damp unless it is ventilated, and a solid board tells you about damp in its first heating season; and at Moulsecoomb and Brickfields the screed is heated. The engineered range takes all three cases, being listed as compatible with the heating.

Flats are 50% of the homes in the Brighton and Hove district, and a flat is usually the wrong place for a solid board: the base is often concrete, the lease usually has an impact-sound clause, and a solid floor cannot be floated on an acoustic underlay. In a converted house with a timber floor and no clause, it can work; in a purpose-built block, an engineered board over acoustic underlay is the right answer and the wood looks the same.

Private renting is 33% of households in Brighton and Hove, and solid oak is a landlord's choice only where the property is held for the long term: the floor costs more to fit than it does to buy, and its advantage, that it can be refinished for decades, pays off over tenancies rather than within one. For a portfolio with a shorter horizon, the engineered range is the usual specification.