Hello Stella In the flooring industry this type of flooring was called a floating floor, because it sits on an underlay. Now it is called an engineered floor (and stops the first question being about the noise underfoot).... but the noise remains depending on the level of the floor and the type of underlay. Engineered floors have a number of layers of timber/ply at right angles to allow the expansion/contraction of the grain to be controlled. The top layer is the prefinished or raw timber species that you want with the other layers in various ply. There are cheaper alternatives again that have particle board (chipboard) or mdf backing with a laminate printed pattern. These are, in my humble opinion not worth opening the box. A solid timber floor can be laid a multitude of ways. Over concrete, I waterproof the slab, level it and glue and nail a plywood sheet. The timber is then laid over it, sanded and flooded (gaps filled) then sealed with a finish being either oil or water/oil based polyurethane. It can also be stained before sealing. With the engineered floors, they come from all over the world. Some are made in China, some are made in Indonesia, some are made in Europe and so on. A major supplier to a lot of the flooring companies is a company called Premium Floors. They supply products to eg carpet shops inc Quick-step and have done for many many years. Their website is worth a look before you go out into retail outlets. As to your original question, when I built my first family home I installed a readyflor (premium floors as it happened) floating floor. The floor withstood some almighty parties (before kids) and still looks amazing 18 years later (it hasn't been sanded at all). Today, I only install solid timber floors in our work purely because of personal preference and the type of renovations we are doing, and when requested by a client we have sourced from Europe. Cheers

No that is not correct. It will be Synteco oil that he will be talking about I assume. I have only used it once because we could not get enough of the livos oil in wa for one job. That was in a yoga school about 10 years ago. Still going strong. I am selling my house in about a year and after 6 years of renovations, three dogs and kids that are now 12 and 13, I will only consider polishing our floor with a white pad. Show me a poly floor that can hold up to that. Actually our floor looks better now than it did when it was first done. Sanders don't like using oil for two reasons, it does them out of a job or they aren't confident enough to use it. Bottom line is there is no better solution unless you like plastic looking,feeling floors and some people do. Each to their own.

If you are after a durable and stable timber floor then Spotted Gum is superior to an engineered floor. But there are many others like Turpentine, Blackbutt, Brush Box, Mahogany to name a few. Having said that the installation process for both are completely different. The longest lasting timber flooring system is Australian Hardwoods installed over Hardwood Battens. Having been in timber flooring in Sydney for over 57 years our experience with trying different products always brings us back to Australian Hardwoods. Selecting a grade of timber does not translate into colours it is merely the quality of the timber board ie in the imperfections of nature - Select Grade has less gum vein and grub marks than say Standard Grade - however if you choose a commercial named grade then you get whatever the suppliers offers in their own grading. Oh and by the way be aware that many imported products are products with Formaldehyde which is toxic. But I agree with Paul if you are after uniformity then you need to go with an engineered product, the beauty of hardwoods lies in the variation so that no two timber floors will be exactly the same. Hope this helps a little more - being a tradesman we do not necessarily base our choices on colours but rather performance of the timbers which varies from species to species.

I do know from experience that a high-gloss finish will turn to satin, and eventually matt where it suffers the most wear, so I would avoid high gloss, unless you like the variation in finish, or are happy to sand it all back and redo it! Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls