The 2025 CFJ Installation of the Year went to Westcotes for its real wood work at London’s Bechstein Hall, including a five-storey staircase, proof nothing matches the beauty and craftsmanship of genuine timber flooring, says Richard Renouf
THE overall winner of this year’s CFJ Installation of the year award went to Westcotes Flooring for their work at the Bechstein Hall laying wood flooring throughout the premises including to the five-storey communal staircase in the apartment block.
This was the type of project that some contractors wouldn’t have thought possible or would have turned down in favour of more easy work.
Contractors tend to have their favourite product types and in the contract field wood-effects can be achieved with LVT, sheet vinyl, SPC and even ceramic tiles so it’s probably not a surprise that many floorlayers overlook the beauty of real wood because they think it’s harder to install or more likely to lead to problems than the products they prefer.
But printed reproductions of wood grain can never be as good as the real thing where every plank is unique, and that’s without considering the sustainability aspects of using real wood rather than plastic.
Traditional wood flooring is made from solid timber machined into planks and usually with tongue-and-groove profiles so they interlock when installed. They can be bonded to solid subfloors or mechanically fixed over joists or timber subfloors, often by secret nailing so the fixings are out of sight. Some modern wood flooring is compressed to increase its hardness and durability in use.
Wood expands and contracts with changes in ambient humidity. The key to successful installation is to ensure the wood is acclimatised so it’s at the same moisture content as the environment in which it is to be laid. This means there’ll be no sudden or dramatic changes in moisture content and so the wood will remain stable and securely fixed.
Solid wood expands and contracts in width and thickness, but the length stays constant. This characteristic is exploited in the manufacture of engineered wood where the planks are made up from layers of wood with the grain running at right angles from one layer to the next.
This counterbalances the expansion and contraction, but it does not stop the movement altogether and so allowance for expansion must still be made when fitting.
One of the most important things to get right when specifying wood flooring is the finish. There are two main categories: oils and lacquers. Oils soak in to the wood surface and provide good protection, but spillages of oil-based materials will also soak into the oiled surface and can cause staining.
Lacquers seal the surface but they can be scratched and damaged. Oiled finished can be re-oiled periodically and both types of finish can be sanded down and refinished as long as there is sufficient wood thickness to allow for this without exposing the lower layers of engineered wood or leaving the floor too thin with solid wood.
Laminate flooring is, technically, an engineered wood product as there is more wood in it than solid wood due to the high pressure used to form the planks. It expands and contracts just like real wood, although it does so in length, width and thickness as the fibres within it are arranged randomly in all directions.
The surface is printed and not a natural grain, and all laminate flooring is laid as a floating floor, so it is not fixed down and must have an expansion gap all round and not be held down by fitted furniture units or fixtures fitted through the flooring into the subfloor.
The surface is very durable and usually carries a very long guarantee against wear, but a good solid or engineered wood floor will still outlast it because of the ability to sand and refinish natural wood.
A recent variation that has come onto the market is engineered wood flooring that has surface and backing veneers with a core of hdf (high density fibreboard), the material from which laminate flooring is made.
Looking back over the last few years of the CFJ Awards, there have been other outstanding wood flooring projects including a museum in Holland where the flooring contractor machined solid wood planks into curves of different colours that were set out in rings to look like the cross-section of a tree trunk.
If that wasn’t impressive enough, the grain flowed up the stairs and onto the upper floor as a continuous design. A visit is on my bucket list, and I look forward to many more demonstrations of the versatility of wood flooring in coming years.
www.richard-renouf.com
Richard Renouf is an independent flooring consultant