We often get asked to stain maple and hickory floors.  We try to dissuade our clients from doing this, as these woods do not take stain well.  When we tell customers this, they sometimes get suspicious and annoyed, as if were are trying to lie to them.  I can understand that, as many hickory and maple kitchen cabinets and pre-finished floors do come stained.
However, those products are created in a factory controlled environment and they use different types of fast dry, spray-on coatings.  The coatings we use on site are gravity permeable and slow drying.

This is what the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association says about  the subject:

“Due to the extremely tight cellular structure and variable grain patterns inherent in northern hard maple, the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association (MFMA) does not recommend staining or bleaching maple strip flooring under any circumstances.

While small areas of individual flooring strips may accept stain without difficulty, it has been our experience that much of the maple surface will appear uneven and “blotchy” following the application of most stains or bleaching agents.

MFMA strongly suggests contacting your floor finish manufacturer directly for specific tinting product recommendations and application instructions.”

If you have additional questions, contact MFMA’s Technical Director at 847-480-9138.

As whenever you go outside your industry’s best practices, you open yourself to liability.  We at Natural Wood Floors, think the risks are too high.  We want our customers happy as possible.

When my customer are planning their new flooring project, they often ask “What is the best wood?” for flooring, to which I usually respond, “it depends.” When my customers are concerned with durability, I will often guide them into picking a harder wood species for their floor. This is because the harder a wood is, the less susceptible to denting and scratches it will be. Wood hardness is calculated using the Janka Ball Harness Test.

The Janka Ball Hardness Test measures the force required to embed a 11.28 millimeter (0.444 inch) steel ball into wood to half its diameter. This method was chosen so that the result would leave an indention 100 square millimeters in size. It is one of the best measures of the ability of a wood species to withstand denting and wear. It is also a good indicator of how hard a species is to saw or nail.

The Janka Ball Hardness Test ranks hardness in a range from about 350-3800. The most common hardwood used for flooring in the United States is Red Oak which has a relatively low hardness of 1250. The Janka ranking for Red Oak is 1290, whereas Brazilian Cherry has a Janka of 2350, which is Double that of Red Oak. That means that you can reasonably expect much more durability from Brazilian Cherry than that Red Oak.

Now the downside to this is that the harder a wood species is, the more expensive it usually is. Red Oak is very common, readily available, and inexpensive. People staying in their homes for a long time will benefit from the upgrade to a harder wood as it will add value to the home, help their home sell faster in the future, and most importantly, the harder floors reduces will reduce the cost of maintenance, as the floor will need to be sanded less often. A softer (cheaper) floor may be less expensive up front, but it will need to be sanded more often, which shortens the life of the floor and costs much more long term.

Below you find a short list of common wood species and their hardness: