For a long time, the most popular type of hardwood flooring was parquet. Parquet was used in the Palace at Versailles in France. Also, TD Garden in Boston uses parquet hardwood flooring for the basketball court where the Boston Celtics play. The parquet was originally used in Boston Garden in the 1940s. Parquet fell out of favor in the past, but it has experienced a resurgence lately as people go in search of classic techniques to spruce up their homes.
What Is Parquet?
In the simplest sense, parquet is geometric shapes of hardwood. In a practical sense, parquet generally refers to squares of wood that are made of smaller pieces of wood. For example, four pieces of wood that are one inch wide and four inches long will make squares that are 16 square inches. Each square will installed as unit. They’re often installed perpendicular to one another to form distinct squares. That constitutes a parquet floor.
A parquet floor often looks like a checkerboard or a chessboard because it is made of squares of equal size.
Why Are They Back?
Parquet hardwood is back for a few reasons. For one, all of these things are cyclical. So, hardwood parquet was bound to become popular again. It has also been growing in popularity as people go in search of affordable type of hardwood. The search for affordable hardwood flooring has led many people to create their own parquet.
Since wood is a natural resource, there are limiting factors. Suppliers try to sell wood that is similar in appearance. That often results in odds and ends that don’t quite match. Suppliers will often have shorter planks that don’t constitute a full batch of wood. They can be used to create squares of wood. Since parquet is made of many different squares, the individual squares don’t have to match perfectly for the effect of the parquet to work.
Parquet is also growing in popularity simply because it is unique. Parquet looks great when it is applied to certain types of flooring. The Boston Celtics, for example, have one of the most memorable courts in the NBA. Small squares of wood are eclectic and interesting; they create visual movement. Large squares of wood help break a room into sections. That can make a small room look much larger. Different types of wood or just different stains can also be used to differentiate parts of a room.