Choosing flooring can be one of the hardest decisions you're faced with while building or remodeling your home. Not only do you have to decide on the type of material, but you also have to choose the texture, color, and finish. A lot of effort goes into finding the perfect flooring, and what you choose can affect your home's entire look and feel. 

At Marks Lumber, we specialize in circle sawn flooring; a flooring that is well-known for its beautiful character and its ability to hide the dings and scratches that come with normal wear and tear. However, there are a few other types of wood flooring that offer unique textures as well. Here is a guide to these textured wood floorings. 

Skip Sawn or Skip Planed Flooring

Skip sawn or skip planed refers to a type of distressed texture that mimics the look of authentic circle sawn, or sometimes band sawn, material. While skip planed floors have a somewhat similar texture to authentic circle sawn flooring, it actually creates a softer, more inconsistent appearance than circle sawn floors. 

This is done by using a technique called skip planing. Skip planing, or 'hit and miss' planing is a technique where the manufacturer hits the face of the material with a planer, just enough to remove a part of the circle sawn texture. This gives the floors a smoother finish and diminishes some of the unique qualities of circle sawn flooring. This same technique can also be used on band-sawn textures to create a more delicate finish. While skip sawn flooring looks similar to circle sawn flooring, because of the softer texture, scratches do become more noticeable than with authentic circle sawn textures.

Wire Brushed Flooring

Wire brushing is the process of running planed material through a machine with wire brushes, roughing up the soft part of the grain. This gives the material a little more texture, which helps hide any scratches. Wire brushed floors are a fairly durable flooring option because the wire brushing process removes the softwood, leaving the hardwood revealed, which is much more difficult to scratch. 

Wire brushing can also be done to both circle sawn and band sawn textures. This actually has the opposite effect of when the technique is done to a planed product. Wire brushing a rough sawn product smooths the material out and softens the texture. While wire brushing offers you a more versatile and customizable texture, brushed floors can often have an unnatural look to them, and consistency has been known to be a problem with wire brushed flooring, so it is important to find a supplier that you trust.

Circle Sawn Flooring

Circle sawn refers to the distinct, arched saw marks created by old circular saws. Authentic circle sawn material is becoming more obscure as many sawmills have replaced their old circular saws with the more efficient band saw. In fact, Marks Lumber is one of the few sawmills left in the Western United States that manufactures circle sawn material.

Circle sawn flooring creates a truly unique look that embodies the natural beauty of the Montana landscape. While many people consider circle sawn flooring a more rustic flooring option, Marks Lumber's circle sawn flooring has been used in every type of building you can imagine –  from western-style homes and lakeside cabins to immaculate, multi-million dollar modern residences. Circle sawn floors are also perfect for homes with kids and active dogs, as the distinct and frequent saw marks expertly hide any scratches that come from these more active family members. 

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