Solid Wood Flooring in Leeds

A solid Windsor board goes into the Victorian and Edwardian houses of Headingley, Chapel Allerton and Roundhay for the same reason the original boards did: a suspended timber ground floor over a ventilated void and rooms proportioned for a plank floor. The boards are laid tongue and groove over the joists or a plywood deck, once the void has been checked and the timber has acclimatised in the room.

It is not the floor for a back-to-back, where the joists have been notched by pipework and the rooms are too small for a wide board to read, and it is not the floor for the heated screed at Aire Park. In the through terraces of Harehills and Armley the honest choice is often the engineered board at a lower cost per square metre, with the solid range reserved for the owner who intends to sand the floor back twice in a lifetime.

With semi-detached houses at 38% of the Leeds stock, the common layout in Leeds is a timber front room and a concrete kitchen. Solid oak suits the first and not the second: it is fixed to timber, not to a slab, and it should stop at the door to the extension. Where the whole ground floor is concrete, an engineered board is the honest recommendation, and the guide linked below says why.

Social renting is 20% of households in Leeds. Solid oak is rarely the specification there, because it asks for a timber base and a stable climate and it is fitted rather than clicked; where a housing provider wants timber across a refurbishment, engineered oak is what the specification usually says, and the guide below sets out the difference.