January 19-22 Las Vegas, Nevada 

The Gaylord brothers had a chance to visit The International Surfaces Event at Mandalay Bay Casino and Convention Center. The show is the leading floor coverings, stone, and tile industry event, which happens once a year. Some people think flooring is boring! Not at #TiseWest. This post will go over some of the flooring trends David and Greg Gaylord found at the event. 

Hardwood Flooring Trends for 2015 

Wide Plank Hardwood Flooring

Attending the over 1000 booths it was quite obvious wide plank flooring is the "in" product right now. Not just wide plank flooring, but rustic wide plank hardwood flooring. Many of the wide plank flooring options came with large knots, cracks, and even some splits. This may not sound desirable, but people were loving them! The fact is that these wide plank rustic flooring options are easy to clean and maintain. We saw wide plank flooring from many different companies, but found one commonality. All the planks were only up to 6 feet long! As a company who manufactures wide plank flooring up to 10 feet, with the average length of 6 feet, this shocked us. Imagine a floor with boards 10 inches wide, but only 3 feet long...not a pretty picture. At the TISE show it was quite apparent that many of these products were manufactured in China or other foreign markets. The two indicators were length of board and quality of finish. When you go within 5 or 10 feet of the samples the short lengths and  low quality finish become very obvious. The finish almost has a shiny, fake look to it. Our biggest push is to buy quality North American manufactured products. The life span will be worth it! 

Grey Hardwood Flooring 

One of the newest trends in the flooring industry is grey tones. We saw some extremely modern floors with grey tones, as well as some wild rustic floors with pure grey tones. It was interesting to see the complete opposites both take the stain color well. The grey tones work really well with a wide range of home decor. This is one of the reasons for the recent appeal. Lets understand how the grey stain on hardwood flooring works. First off, hardwood flooring is very difficult to be pure grey. Most of the grey tones you will see will have a brown undertone. This is what people are loving. Grey flooring with brown undertones are very conservative, yet classy. If you want a pure grey floor it is much riskier for resale value. When a floor is pure grey the stain looks almost painted on. Beware of this as some people do not find the look as appealing. We are here to help! Our designers know the ins and outs of the industry and want you to find the perfect floor for your home.