If you
want wood floors, you've got 3 main choices: solid hardwood, engineered wood and laminate flooring.
Solid hardwood - As the name implies, is solid wood all the way through, from top to bottom. It's
similar to any other stick of lumber that sawn straight off of the log--no
additional materials added.
Engineered wood - Engineered flooring basically is
a sandwich of finish wood and plywood. The finish wood is what you see and walk
on. The plywood underneath comprises 80-90% of the floor. Each ply runs
perpendicular to its adjacent ply, giving dimensional strength to the sandwich.
This means that engineered wood flooring stands up well to areas with light
moisture--basements and bathrooms.
Laminate flooring - Laminate flooring is not real
wood, at least not in the way that hardwood and engineered wood are. It's
comprised of a thin top layer of resin-infused paper, all on top of a wood-chip
composite.