When shopping around for new hardwood flooring, you want to find a long-lasting product that suits your unique style and taste. This year, many interior designers and homeowners are turning to hardwood flooring products that are light in color, especially in spaces with a contemporary or modern feel.

Light-colored wood flooring is sleek, incredibly easy to maintain, and can offer an added boost to just about any room in your home. In this post, our hardwood flooring experts will outline the top five light word floors for 2002 to inspire your next flooring project or to determine which wood might look best in your dream home.

An Overview of Light Hardwood Floors

It is no secret that endless wood flooring products are available, from different hardwood species to various colors and finishes. When it comes to wood flooring, you can attain most any color you desire, from woods that are nearly black to woods that are almost snow white.

For this article, when we discuss light wood floors, we generally mean shades that, in the industry, we refer to as blonde. These light hardwood floors typically feature golden or very pale undertones.

Light hardwood flooring is versatile. It works great in rooms with abundant natural light to complement the brightness of the space, and it is also quite useful in darker rooms that need a bit of pop. Either way, light hardwood floors are a great fit in many different types of spaces.

The Top Light Wood Floors in 2022

As promised, here is our comprehensive list of the top five light wood floors for 2022:

Maple Wood Flooring

Of all the common popular hardwood floor species, maple wood flooring is the lightest in color. Maple wood flooring features a smooth grain and can give a space a truly modern look. If you are looking for an incredible light-colored hardwood floor, maple will be your best bet. However, if the hardness of the wood species you use is a factor, avoid southern maple, as it tends to be a softer wood product.

Hickory Wood Flooring

When it comes to wood species, you cannot find a light wood more durable and strong than hickory. Hickory wood flooring offers a traditional rustic wood floor look with heavy grain and loads of character. One of the best features of hickory hardwood plank flooring is its contrasting colors which look great when left natural or when stained.

Speaking of staining, hickory wood flooring responds to staining quite well, which makes it an easier wood flooring product to refinish. If you are in the market for wood flooring to use in a DIY wood floor installation, however, hickory is probably not your best choice, as it is famously difficult to install.

Oak Wood Flooring

Oak is plentiful, affordable, and an incredibly common and popular hardwood flooring choice. Oak is so popular that it is essentially the hardwood flooring industry standard. Best of all, there are two different types of oak hardwood flooring to choose from – white oak and red oak.  

The lighter of the two oaks is the red oak, which features a very light color with tinges of pink and an incredibly dominant grain. Flooring made of white oak is somewhat darker, has a golden hue, and is the harder of the two.

Ash Wood Flooring

Ash hardwood flooring products are similar to oak, though a bit softer with incredibly strong grains. As a matter of fact, it’s the grain that makes Ash such a unique and special wood. Its grain can be used to create interesting and beautiful wood flooring patterns and designs. If you are worried that ash flooring is out of your price range, consider a pre-engineered Ash hardwood product.

Pine Wood Flooring

Pine is an attractive choice when it comes to light wood flooring products. However, you should proceed with caution before you choose pine wood flooring. Pine is a soft wood species; therefore, it is often more susceptible to wood floor dents and scratches.

While it might not be an appropriate choice for every room, pine is long-lasting and can outperform other wood flooring species in the right settings.

Conclusion

We hope that this list of the top five light wood floors for 2022 is useful in helping you to determine the right light wood flooring for your next project. Although we have outlined the top five, many other popular light wood species are used in hardwood flooring, including douglas fir, birch, and holly. When you have decided on the type of light wood floor species that will work best for your next project, contact Artisan Wood Floors for hardwood floor installation in Philadelphia and beyond! Call (215) 515-7355 and ask for Steve!