Bamboo Flooring Pros And Cons + Colours, Types & History

Bamboo flooring installed in a hallway

Bamboo flooring was introduced to the Australian market around 20 years ago. In terms of aesthetics, it closely resembles other engineered wood products, yet it is crafted very differently. The process involves boiling steaming raw bamboo grass to remove sugars and starches from the natural plant material

It is then dried, and the strands of raw, dried bamboo are then sliced, shredded, woven and pressed with glues, resin binders and heat. Typically, a hydraulic press will compact the bamboo into a square log which is eventually cut down to plank size for processing into floorboards.

The result is solid engineered bamboo planks or engineered planks with a top layer of bamboo. They are typically glued or nailed to a subfloor surface.

What is the history of bamboo flooring?

Bamboo flooring first entered the market around twenty years ago. It was soft, expensive and very unstable. Choice was also limited in terms of colour — only “natural” and coffee (which was carbonised) colours were available, both came in gloss and semi-gloss versions and were constructed vertically and horizontally.

 This early product used a tongue and groove glue-together installation method (like most floating floors at the time), and it was sometimes directly stuck to the floor, which proved to be a huge mistake! This is because bamboo grows and contracts on average two and a half times an engineered timber floor, making boards unstable and prone to splitting. Additionally, compared to Australian hardwoods, it was quite soft (weighing only 7 on the Janka Scale) and showed damage easily.

Cold pressing

Strand weaving was a different practice from the vertical and horizontal methods, and the first woven bamboo flooring method of manufacturing was referred to as “cold pressing”. Instead of being formed from rods of bamboo that were essentially just glued together, strand woven bamboo was sliced into strands.

These strands were then dipped in adhesive, left to dry and then placed into a mould. This was heated and pressed, putting the bamboo under pressure while activating the adhesive. It significantly increased the hardness and density of the bamboo, more than doubling its Janka rating. Around this time, locking systems also became available for hard flooring, and this is where bamboo flooring entered the mainstream market. This enabled flooring to be laid faster than earlier versions, thus decreasing its cost.

Manufacturers, particularly from Asia, imported bamboo flooring at this time in huge volumes. However, a lot of the product entering the market was improperly cured and not always evenly dried. This meant the boards on the outside of the blocks often had a lower moisture content which made the product prone to splitting through the centre of the plank.

Hot pressing

In an attempt to avoid this problem, a new method of strand weaving was invented, known as “hot pressing”. Like cold-pressed bamboo, the bamboo strands were moulded, but this mould was differently shaped, allowing more bamboo to be loaded into the mould, creating a product with a higher density. Additionally, because the mould was much thinner, the “cooking” time was greatly reduced.

The product was denser and more stable than cold-pressed bamboo and exceeded 16 on the Janka scale. However, the colour of the bamboo fluctuated dramatically and was often very different to the samples the consumer viewed before purchasing.