Great Green Flooring

Great Green Flooring

When it comes to replacing floors in your home, sales of bamboo floors are on the rise. Bamboo is more eco-friendly because it grows much faster than trees. But how do bamboo floors stack up against oak floors, the most popular type of flooring? Consumer Reports tested 21 different types of hardwood flooring, including seven bamboo floors ranging in price from $4 a square foot to $9.

The floors were put through a battery of tests, including an abrasion test that simulates years of foot traffic, a test designed to see how easily a floor scratches, and another test that shows how well a floor can withstand denting. But that's not all.

To test stain resistance, a wide variety of substances are placed on each of the floors—everything from ketchup to crayons. It turns out that an oak flooring got the lowest rating. It's the Anderson Pacific Cumberland oak floor.

Interestingly, two bamboo floors out-performed all the hard woods. Consumer Reports' tests found that bamboo flooring has gotten much tougher. There's a new manufacturing technique that shreds the bamboo into strands, which are glued together with an adhesive that creates less emissions than with traditional bamboo floors.

The top-rated floor is the EcoTimber Strand Woven Honey bamboo. And at $5.50, it's a Consumer Reports Best Buy.