Are you one of the many homeowners who is trying to create a sustainable environment with the products you bring into your home? If wood is high on your list as a flooring choice, you’re on the right track. As long as you purchase wood floors through a manufacturer that uses sustainable practices, you’ll be doing your part for the environment.

Add in the fact that quality wood flooring can last years longer than other types of flooring, and you’ll quickly find hardwood floors leading the way as your top choice.

Have you ever thought about how much wood goes into creating hardwood floors throughout your home?

Let’s start with how much wood it takes to build your home from the ground up.

The typical home is around 2,400 square feet. To build a home of this size, it requires around 16,000 board feet of framing lumber, and around 14,000 square feet of other wood products, which would include plywood, particleboard, wood joists, hardboard, and so on.

A board foot is a standard measure of usable wood in a tree. A board foot would result in a piece of lumber one inch thick, one foot wide and one foot long.

That’s a lot of wood in the structure of your house! And while much of this wood is hidden behind the drywall and underneath your flooring, it takes a special kind of wood to wind up on your floors and become a part of your room’s décor for years on end.

The typical home will have around 1,200 square feet on the main level, with an additional 1,200 square feet on the upper level. How many trees would be needed? The answer may surprise you. To gain enough wood for one level of a home, you would need 12 trees, each one around 18 inches in diameter and at least 10 feet long to make enough boards to cover your area in hardwood flooring. For the entire house, double the amount of wood.

Of course if a tree is wider in diameter, the number would go down.

There is quite a process from forest to laying the wood in your home. From felled tree to floorboard, the process takes around four to five months for processing. Yet it’s definitely worth the wait!

Once you have them installed and see the beauty shine through, you’ll be more than happy you chose hardwoods as your flooring of choice.