NWFA Reminds Consumer and Retailers that Cork & Ba
St. Louis, MO, January 14--The National Wood Flooring Association has launched an effort to remind consumers and retailers that cork and bamboo represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the wood flooring industry.
The NFWA said also that the growth popularity of these two catagories has a lot to do with the environmental friendliness of the products.
Cork is abundant in Portugal and Spain, and is actually the bark of an oak tree. The bark from these trees can be harvested every 20 years, with a fine inner layer of bark left on the tree to protect it. Trees will continue to produce bark for 150 years before they will need to be replaced with new growth.
Once the bark is harvested, it is ground, and reconstituted with a binder and formed into blocks. During the binding process, the cork is heated, and the length of time spent in that phase determines the color of the finished product. The color palette of cork ranges from light to dark, with a unique non-grain pattern.
Bamboo also is a product that regenerates itself quickly. Grown primarily in Asia, bamboo can be harvested every four to six years, and will regrow on its own as long as no more than 50 percent of the mature growth is harvested. Bamboo actually is a grass, and will send up new shoots every year to regenerate itself. It also is very dimensionally stable, not by nature of the species, but due to the manufacturing process of engineered products.
Bamboo typically is light colored, ranging from manila/yellow tones to a darker tannish brown, with a unique grain pattern that shows nodes from the bamboo stalks.
To see some of the possibilities offered by different wood flooring species, visit Types, Styles and Species under the Why Wood Floors section of the NWFA's consumer web site, http://www.woodfloors.org
