The best engineered hardwood flooring brands offer exceptional quality, beauty and structural stability that allows them to be installed where solid hardwood can’t be – in humid areas of the house, like the bathroom, and below grade in a tri-level or basement.
Wait – isn’t engineered hardwood solid?
The top layer is solid hardwood with all the elegant good looks you expect. But the base layers are plywood or other wood materials that give the floor the ability to expand and contract without warping or cracking when humidity and temperature change. Because of this construction, it’s also simply called engineered flooring.
This is not fake wood flooring such as laminate or luxury vinyl planks and tiles. OK, let’s get to the best engineered hardwood flooring brands.
Here are pro reviews of the best engineered flooring brands along with product details and prices. They’re in alphabetical order.
How much does it cost to install engineered hardwood floors? Expect labor to run between $3.50 and $6.00 per square foot based on the amount of flooring, the layout of the rooms, potential subfloor issues and where you live. Most homeowners pay around $5.25 per square foot for installation on top of the cost of the flooring.
Can I install engineered hardwood flooring myself? We get that question, and the answer is “Yes, you can!” Most brands are designed for the handy homeowner to DIY.
This is a premium flooring brand at higher-than-average prices. But read on…
Savvy buyers want to know what’s beneath the solid wood layer of engineered hardwood – and Anderson is the industry leader here. The brand developed the crossed layers of material with alternating direction wood grain to create a highly stable and very strong base.
The solid wood layers are gorgeous too. Choose a 1/2” or 3/4” option for refinishing down the road or a 3/8” top layer to save money now.
Browse hickory, maple, oak, pecan – and don’t miss the rich and lovely walnut!
Styles: The looks available cover the taste spectrum - smooth, distressed, heavy scraped, wire brushed and bleached/painted. A variety of widths plus mixed-width lines are manufactured.
Installation options are floating, glued and nailed for most Anderson lines.
Lines: Top sellers are Natural Timbers in several shades, rough-scraped Palo Duro in 5” and mixed width and the Vintage Collection with options in hickory, maple and that must-see walnut line mentioned earlier. Old World Herringbone in 3 color options is worth a look too, if that’s your style. Anderson engineered hardwood is offered in about 30 total lines – a very nice selection.
Prices: $10.00 to around $19.00 per square foot. Most Anderson Tuftex flooring prices are between $12 and $16 per square foot.
It is a cost-conscious option if you’d love hardwood at prices competitive with luxury vinyl.
But low cost doesn’t mean limited quality or selection. There are more than 150 styles, and most are made in the USA and backed by a 15-year warranty.
Species are ash, birch, cherry, hickory, maple, red or white oak and walnut. The largest selections are in bold.
Styles: What’s your preference? Brushed, distressed, hand scraped, smooth and traditional give you plenty of lovely choices.
Installation options include floating, glue-down, nailed or stapled and several locking options. Most styles give you a choice of installation method.
Widths start at 3”, so-called strip flooring, and range up to 9”, but most of the wider widths are 6 ½” to 7 ½”.
Top Lines: Brushed Impressions in white oak and hickory gives you 20+ styles to enjoy in a spectrum of color hues. Planks are 5” to 9”. The Turlington American Exotics in walnut, maple, hickory and birch includes narrow 3” planks, but most is 5”. If you want a waterproof option, consider Hydropel, which stands up to normal spills for 36 hours. It’s backed with a 50-year finish warranty.
Prices: $3.00 to $8.00 per square foot, with most falling in the $4 to $5 range.
About 75% of the flooring has a 3/8” top layer, which accounts for much of the lower cost. You should be able to refinish it once.
This is richly textured hardwood that gathers inspiration from the forests of the US to the pubs of England to the European continent.
Johnson Hardwood engineered flooring is mid-priced with high-end quality and appearance. Consider engineered hardwood from Johnson Hardwood in handsome European oak, acacia, hickory, maple and walnut. What’s missing is American white and red oak flooring.
Styles: The 10 lines are divided into distressed, hand scraped, light wire-brushed, heavier wire-brushed and sawn that has robust wood texture.
Top Lines: The brand’s signature wood species is European oak in Blue Ridge, British Isles, Grand Chateau and Jockey Hollow lines. They boast mixed width options starting at 3” wide up to a beefy 7 ½”. Those lines are also offered in acacia.
English Pub flooring looks just like you’d expect in smoky, comfortable tones ranging from honey warmth to cool gray. Frontier and Pacific Coast are manufactured in birch, while Victorian and Roma are beautiful hickory and acacia. There are 10 engineered hardwood lines in all.
Prices: $5.00 to $8.50 per square foot with most lines in the $7.00 range.
Kahrs engineered hardwood flooring is manufactured with the brand’s patented 3-layer design that enhances strength and stability. Like some other brands, Kahrs makes a full line of hardwood care and maintenance products.
Styles: Dotted throughout the collection are handscraped, smooth, brushed and smoked Kahrs engineered flooring.
Top Lines: The 16 lines combine for 86 different floor options in any color you prefer. It’s no surprise that this Scandinavian brand’s Smaland Collection is its signature line – oak boasting knots, grain and other character. There are plenty of cool and warm color choices.
The Founders Collection, also in oak, shows the Kahrs family’s commitment to letting the beauty of the wood speak for itself, enhanced with a heavily scraped and brushed texture topped with a natural oil finish.
Kahrs makes a nice Chevron Collection in 3 tones and the attractive Rugged Collection in five robust floors suitable for a, “rustic cabin vibe or French farmhouse style.”
Prices: $7.00 to $15.00 per square foot with most lines in the $8.00 to $12.00 range.
One of the largest flooring manufacturers, Mohawk makes a nice selection of engineered hardwood to consider.
Midrange in price, this flooring can be floated or glued.
Styles: Most flooring is smooth or lightly textured. There are a few handscraped and brushed options. Every color in the flooring spectrum is well represented, from light golden oak to rich dark hickory, with plenty of cool gray tones too.
Hickory and white oak are the most-used wood species, but walnut, maple and birch are represented in many lines too. Plank widths range from 3” to about 8” depending on the line.
Top Lines: Mohawk’s product list can be confusing. Tecwood in its various lines is engineered hardwood. RevWood is not – it’s luxury vinyl. The brand also manufacturers flooring it calls engineered wood.
With that in mind, Mohawk makes a large selection of affordable options.
Tecwood is the basic engineered flooring. Tecwood Essentials and Tecwood Premier are a slight step up. The engineered wood is Mohawk’s top line.
The best approach is to locate a local Mohawk retailer – many big box stores carry it as well as local flooring stores. Check out the offerings, and compare them apples-to-apples.
You might also find it helpful to browse the Mohawk site to find specific floors that fit your style – but there’s no pricing there.
Prices: Cost starts at about $4.00 per square foot. Average cost is $6.50 to $8.00 per square foot with a top price of about $11.00. If you buy online, shop around. Prices vary quite a lot.
The brand that invented laminate flooring and still remains at the top in that category now makes very nice engineered hardwood. It is about twice the cost of the brand’s laminate, but still quite affordable.
It’s a limited collection, but its quality places it on our list of the best engineered hardwood flooring. However, this is budget flooring – good quality for what it is, but it lacks the sumptuous richness of brands like Anderson Tuftex, Kahrs and Johnson Hardwood.
Styles: Most options are oak. There’s a smattering of hickory too. The color range is good. Plank width for both lines is 7 ½”, and they are wire brushed. Lengths are just 48”, so you’ll have more seams than if you choose pricier brands with longer planks.
Top Lines: Pergo makes 2 lines, and they’re both waterproof – holding out liquids caused by normal household spills.
Pergo Woodcraft offers a larger selection of flooring in oak and hickory. It’s a click-together flooring for floating installation, but can be glued as well. Woodcraft is backed by a lifetime surface wear and subfloor warranty.
Pergo Defense+ flooring is a limited range of white oak in 6 colors, mostly dark tones.
Prices: Wood craft ranges from $4.25 to $5.50 per square foot. All Defense+ engineered flooring is $5.00 per square foot.
When Shaw entered the engineered hardwood market, it chose to produce high-quality flooring that competes with Kahrs, Anderson Tuftex (a Shaw brand) and other premium brands.
Cost shows that – but so does the quality and beauty of the flooring. Shaw calls its engineered flooring Repel because of its moisture-resistant treatment. All Shaw engineered flooring is manufactured in the United States.
Styles: There’s a nice blend of rustic to Old World to stylish contemporary to consider. Plank widths tend to be wide – which is trending currently.
12 of the lines are wire brushed. A few are smooth and Shaw offers a couple distressed looks too.
Top Lines: 18 lines are produced, most available in 3-6 colors. Reflections White Oak is a top seller in 7 wire brushed colors with a warm, casual appearance. Planks are 7” wide and range from 16” to 80” in length.
Inspiration Ash delivers a more contemporary look in 3 tones. It is wire brushed with planks in various widths, common to Shaw flooring.
Prices: The least expensive is about $6.00 per square foot for Celestial, but then price jumps to $8.00 to $12.00 for most other lines. The Monument lines – Hickory and Maple – are the most expensive.
This brand is positioned in the midrange to expensive tier of engineered flooring. It’s a good value – premium engineered hardwood at competitive pricing in its niche.
Somerset makes solid hardwood in addition to 7 collections of engineered hardwood floors. Each offers 4 to 10 colors.
Styles: Your options are flooring in scraped, smooth and textured finishes. The textured finish is a traditional finish similar to wire brushing.
Styles cover the design spectrum from rustic and traditional to modern and contemporary.
Somerset calls its narrow-width planks “strip flooring,” as other brands do. Widths start at just 2 ¼”. Most lines are medium-width, and several boast either wide planks or boxes of mixed-width planks.
In short, Somerset covers the range of styles better than most manufacturers.
Top Lines: The Color Plank Collection sells very well due to its 7 Appalachian oak colors – each in 4” and 5” widths for visual interest. The Somerset Classic Collection is also Appalachian oak in 7 colors, but plank widths are 2 ¼” and 3 ¼”. Both floors have a 50-year finish warranty and lifetime structural warranty for residential use.
The Character Collection incorporates wood knots and other characteristics found in maple, hickory and white oak. Somerset’s Specialty Collection is the largest, 10 options in Appalachian hickory and maple, with colors in the cool to warm range with planks from 2 ¼” to 5”.
Depending on your preferences, you might also like the Somerset Wide Plank Collection with pks of 6” and 7” or the Hand Crafted Collection featuring subtle hand scraping.
Prices: $6.00 to $10.50 per square foot. Most lines are around $8.00 per square foot.
What’s Your Flooring Preference?
As you can see from the descriptions and pricing, the best engineered hardwood floors are produced in three general tiers.
Budget: Pergo, Bruce and some of the cheaper lines from other brands are affordable, a step up from laminate but not “lifetime” floors. Some can be refinished once, but that’s about it.
Most popular: The middle tier is where most of the brands in our list fall. Costs range from about $6 to $8 per square foot.
Top of the Line: Then there are the premium brands like Anderson Tuftex, Kahrs and Somerset plus a few top lines from other brands. These are long-term flooring options that can certainly be refinished, possibly more than once to give a home 50 to 80 years of service.
You have options, in other words, on the level of investment you want to make in quality engineered hardwood flooring.
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