Quarter-Sawn Wood Flooring

Q: I have been looking at quarter-sawn wood flooring vs. plain sawn wood flooring. The quarter-sawn is more expensive, but I’ve heard it’s better. Should I buy it?

A: Yes, if your budget allows for it. Quarter-sawn wood flooring is considered a big deal (vs. plain-sawn wood).

Quarter-sawn wood flooring is superior to plain-sawn because of the way the saw bites into the wood.  Instead of sawing tangentially to the rings in the wood, the saw blade approaches perpendicular to the wood rings.

This is a big deal, because sawing tangentially to the rings gives your wood flooring planks more of the really soft wood that the tree produces between the rings.  And the tree rings are the hard part.

Sawing off quarter sections produces less usable planks, so the price is higher.

In this image, the plain-sawn boards are on the right-hand side.