Many people are confused by this terminology. Solid wood flooring is, as the name suggests, made from a single piece of hardwood lumber. The main advantage of solid wood flooring is that it is cost effective to make. Solid wood strips may be suitable when the plank width is narrow, however problems arise once the widths get into “wideplank” territory, which is generally considered to be 6” and wider. Once the width surpasses 6”, solid floors become unstable and are subject to problems with shrinkage and cupping. This is where engineered flooring comes in. Engineered flooring gets its name from the fact that there are multiple layers glued together in such a way as to counter the forces of expansion and contraction that inevitably occur as the seasons change and the moisture content of the wood in a floor changes. The “engineering” of an engineered wood floor is an indication that thought and effort have been put into the floor’s structural design to ensure that it will remain stable in all conditions. Finally, laminate flooring is not real wood flooring at all. It is a pattern printed on paper and glued onto a high-density fibreboard backer. Laminate floors are usually cheap when initially purchased, but tend to last nowhere as long as a high-quality wood floor, and certainly are not loved to the same extent either.