Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette David Orbison and his wife, Beth, chose bamboo floors in their new Lawrenceville condo.

By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Paint, window and wall coverings are all ways to make a design statement. But all can be trumped by what's on the floor.

Little surprise, then, that a growing number of homeowners are shaking things up when it comes to choosing a new floor covering.

"People definitely want something with visual interest that's a little different from what's next door," says Tami Boyle, a design consultant at Rusmur Floors in Bridgeville.

		Related articles From sheets to cutlery, bamboo has many uses Check out these companies for more information about flooring

Indigenous hardwoods such as oak, pine and maple are still popular among the traditionalists. But some wood lovers are stepping into something a little more exotic, such as cherry and Santos mahogany from Brazil, Timborana from Central America, Amendoim from Argentina and Bangkirai from Indonesia.

And then there's bamboo, which has been around so long that we sometimes forget it's not indigenous. Bamboo seems to be underfoot everywhere these days, alongside a couple other old/new materials -- cork and real linoleum -- that are fast gaining ground.

Bamboo's varied texture is what led David Orbison and his wife, Beth, to choose it for their home in the Blackbird Lofts in Lawrenceville. Many loft dwellers like the industrial look of polished concrete, but the Orbisons wanted something that was a little warmer. Once they spotted bamboo at Artemis, a "green" building supplies store on Butler Street, they were hooked.

"We thought the texture was different and interesting, and the light color works with the light space of the loft," Mr. Orbison said.

Not only does it add wood tones to the color scheme, it's warmer and softer on the feet than concrete.

Botanically speaking, bamboo is a grass rather than a type of wood. But once its round, hollow shoots are sliced into strips, boiled in water to remove the starch, pressed flat, and processed into laminated boards, it looks like strip flooring, with an unusual grain. At anywhere from $3.50 to $7 or $8 per square foot, it's comparable in price to hardwoods and can be nailed, stapled, glued or "floated" without attachment.

Many homeowners like bamboo because it is sustainable; the grass grows to maturity in about five years and is renewably harvested over and over from the same plants. It is also moisture- and stain-resistant, and is harder than both maple and oak.

Just how hot is bamboo? Both Home Depot and Lowe's offer it for sale, as does Sam's Club, where enough to cover 24 square feet goes for $71.32.

Bamboo is available in two grain alignments: horizontal, which produces a slightly wider grain pattern, and vertical, which displays the unique joint features of the grass. Colors are typically limited to natural (light) or carbonized (amber), though at least one company, Duro-design, offers stained bamboo in more than 50 colors, including turquoise and scarlet red.

Cork flooring is another eco-friendly flooring option. Though it's just popping up now on home shows and showroom floors, cork flooring is hardly a new idea: Frank Lloyd Wright famously used cork in some of his buildings in the early 20th century, including Fallingwater.

Unlike hardwood, which is made from cut trees, cork comes from the bark of the cork oak tree. The material is ground, processed into sheets and baked in a kiln to produce tiles. Since it can be harvested without killing the tree, it's high on the sustainability scale.

Cork's natural elasticity makes it especially easy on the feet, a nice feature in kitchens, and it also has natural sound-deadening and insulation characteristics. Even in winter, it's warm to walk on. Cork is also naturally nonallergenic and extremely resilient, making it resistant to dents.

Because it's processed from tiny pieces, manufacturers can offer an incredible array of patterns and textures. Globus Cork, for instance, has more than 20 patterns and the colors it offers run the gamut from lemon to tangerine to ocean blue. The company also offers cork inlays in 10 styles.

Like hardwood, cork can be glued, nailed down or floated over a variety of subfloors, including concrete and plywood. Wicanders' glueless CorkLoc floating floor system locks into place, much like laminate flooring. Still, you have to be careful where you put it. Because cork reacts to changes in relative humidity, it's not recommended for rooms with a high moisture concentration, such as bathrooms or basements. Prices start at about $5.50 per square foot for natural cork and $7.50 for colored cork.

Dan and Elisa Beck of Monroeville replaced a cracked ceramic floor in their 13-year-old kitchen with a sand-colored, floating cork floor from Architectural Clay Products, North Side, last year.

Not only is easier on the feet, they say, but it's more forgiving on dishes and glasses.

"I can't believe somebody could be in love with a floor, but I am," she says. "It's fantastic."

If you're looking for something with an even older pedigree than cork, check out linoleum. Often confused with vinyl, real linoleum is much older, much more environmentally friendly and much cooler than the dowdy stuff that grandma had in her kitchen.

Armstrong's Marmorette line of sheet linoleum comes in more than 50 colors, including firebird red, mango and Bermuda blue. Forbo's Marmoleum floors, which are available in sheet form, square tiles and easy-to-install floating laminate panels, are brighter still. Colors include peacock green, lapis lazuli and bleekerstreet, a purplish red.

"People are falling in love with it because it's so much fun and you can be very creative in your design," says Janice Donatelli, co-owner of Artemis, which carries the product.

If you're a do-in-yourselfer, try Marmoleum click, a laminate on HDF panels and cork. It took Lynn Lewandowski and husband Larry Rautio of Lawrenceville a couple of days to lay 12-inch square orange-and-black tiles on a diagonal in their '50s kitchen.

"It couldn't have been easier," she says.

One of linoleum's best features is that it is extremely durable. Properly installed and maintained (i.e., regularly polished), it can last 40 years or more. It's also easy to keep clean; linoleum is so antistatic that it actually repels dust. And because the color goes all the way through to the backing, it wears well.

Made from renewable natural materials (linseed oil is a main ingredient), linoleum gets high marks from green building advocates. Prices start at about $3 per square foot for sheet flooring and tiles, and $6 per square foot for a floating system.

So what if you can't afford one of the new exotics or don't relish having to tear up an old floor? You might consider laminate, a type of flooring in which a photograph is copied onto cellulose paper and placed under a tough protective film that is glued and pressed to a high-density packing board.

Before you scoff, consider this: thanks to improvements in technology, today's laminates are more realistic and prettier than ever, with authentic-looking grains and colors. Some laminates even have micro-beveled edges on each plank so that they look like individual floor boards.

Wilsonart Flooring's Red Label Handscraped Collection, for example, has the look of an old reclaimed wood floor. Laminate can also reproduce the look of tile and stone.

Laminate manufacturers have also been quick to jump on the exotic bandwagon. Pergo's Global Passage collection includes Asian bamboo, African Padauk and Brazilian cherry designs; its World Traveler collection features ironwood, jatoba and koa.

Prices for laminate flooring can run as low as $1 or $2 per square foot, depending on manufacturer and style, though most high-end products will run $3 or $4 per square foot. Other manufacturers include Alloc, Quick-Step, Mohawk and Shaw.

Besides price, the best feature of laminates is that most laminates no longer require glue for installation, which makes it the ideal do-it-yourself project. Or as Mark Easton, a millwork specialist at Lowe's in Cranberry puts it, "Anyone who can get down on his hands and knees can do it."

If a picture of an exotic wood doesn't work for you, the real thing is increasingly available in both solid and engineered boards. For a real floor show-stopper, try purpleheart, an exceptionally dense hardwood from the Brazilian Amazon region of South America.

One warning, though: Its price may leave you a little purple in the face. Exotics are more expensive than many traditional hardwoods. Brazilian cherry, for example, typically starts at about $7.50 per square foot and can go as high as $11, depending on width and manufacturer. Santos mahogany is pricier still, starting at about $12.50 per square foot.

Yet it's not just about funky colors and unusual grain patterns; there is also more call for the wide-plank floors that go hand-in-hand with old houses, Mrs. Boyle notes, along with heightened interest in rustic and distressed finishes.

One of the latest trends in wood floors is the hand-scraped look, such as those featured in Anderson Hardwood's Virginia Vintage and Biltmore lines of hardwood flooring. The planks are handscraped by craftsmen with special tools or distressed by machines to reproduce the natural worn look of century-old floors.

"It's all about texture," Mrs. Boyle says.