These are 5.5" and the hall is only 43" wide. This should give you perspective on a smaller area. I have 3" in the great room with high ceilings and think they are too narrow. When I did the rest of the house, I used wider and really like it better.

All my floor is covered up with the stuff that used to be in the kitchen! I think it depends more on the scale of the room. I have few rooms for the size of the house--so they're all big. The wide planks look great! If you don't have wide open spaces, perhaps you'll like the 3.25" better.

steff_1, I love your floors. The width looks very nice in your hallway. What wood species are the floors since on my monitor the color is beautiful.

I saw a townhouse the other day with 3" wide wood floors that too me looked not wide enough but I did visit a condo in my neighborhood that had 3.25" wide wood floors. I notice people moving in when I was walking my little dog and I see they have wood floors from the window, so I knock on the door to welcome them to my neighborhood. They asked me to come in and loved my little Sassy. So I know I do not want a floor less than 3.25" wide. I wish the BR-111 Triangulo Engineered Wood floors would have an option of 4" wide boards. Maybe I would like the wider boards since they have longer boards and more of the grain would show?

I also knocked on a neighbor's door tonight that had Merbau floors in the 5" width and they were beautiful. They have the same family room as me but the rest of their home has a different layout with a much longer hallway when you enter their home.

Two of my rooms are one big room with a half wall high and long in the room and I used both of these rooms as my home office so their is a lot of furniture in these two rooms. The other room is not big but is open to the kitchen and has a high cathedral ceiling with big windows so maybe the bigger plank would look nice in that room.

The floors are Kempas engineered purchased from Prosource. We selected Kempas because it's not as dark as Brazilian Cherry and the grain is smoother than oak. We get lots of compliments on them.

If your rooms are connected, you should go with the same size throughout. If you have a lot of furniture in the small room, then the width of the wood won't be much of a factor anyway. I don't think you necessarily need to match the size of the room to the size of the plank. Fewer lines and seams in the wide planks could make the room seem more spacious.

Also, someone in the dec thread said that wide planks might cup. Mine have been installed close to three years and I have no problem.

Love your floor steff. We are getting ready to order the BR-111 and I still have to decide on the color. My choices are 3" or 6" and I had not even thought about the 6" but now after seeing your 5.5" I think I will. I have large rooms. My 3 rooms come to 865 sq ft. (kit,fam, and dining.)
My cabinets are medium brown cherry and the rest of the house is done in light to dark oak. Should I go with the Brazilian Cherry or Amendoim???????

Steff, did they use glue or floated it? Thanks!

Steff1, I also LOVE your Kempas Floors. I actually preferred Kempas in all the samples I had here but others talked me out of it and I only thought I could buy engineered Kempas in the Hartco brand and the Bella brand. I did not know Prosource sold it. Did you glue it or float it? What wear layer does it have and how thick is the board. The color is what I had initially wanted when I decided to get an exotic wood floor.

I have a very open floor plan for all three rooms but separate the rooms by creating a doorway with my file cabinets. From looking at your picture, I am now leaning towards the 5" wide. What brand are your floors? I have not ordered yet but would like to order a floor by the end of this week especially since my 19.5 year old carpet is now not only so dirty but ripped up in so many areas from my friend who bought a new moisture meter to figure out if my cement floor had moisture and my slab appears to be very dry in all three rooms despite nonstop rain for over a month.

We pretty sure the brand we used is Hartco. I just checked the Prosource website and could not find it listed. The installer used glue both on the first floor slab and the plywood subfloors upstairs. Would need to find the paperwork to confirm the thickness, etc. We think it is 3/8". It wears well, but the smooth surface shows any dents or scratches more than the oak floors in the great room.

While looking this up just now, I found Lumber Liquidators has something called "Brazilian Kempas." It's not pretty and doesn't look at all like these floors which came from Asia.

Here are my floors. They are 5 1/2 inch wide plank wire brushed Brazilian Cherry (merlot finish). I LOVE them.
Happy shopping!

Christine

My floors are 5.25", the width is exaggerated by the bevels as well. Wide widths are like large tiles these days, generally more popular and seen as more "upscale".

Here is my 5" wide Ipe wood floor. (This wood is extremely dense, btw.)

We also used it in a guest BR

cdecker1, your floors are beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Chiefneil, I love your floors and your room size makes the floors even look nicer.

Smarge, I LOVE your floors with the color variation like I am looking for in the Brazilian Cherry. They look like 4" wide to me (which is the size I seen find the prettiest in my home office but the pieces I like are always solid wood and I do not want to install a sub-floor) since they are not so wide or maybe it is because when the boards are put together, the width is not so wide anymore? I wish I was going with solid wood since then I would have more choices of widths.

Thank you all for sharing your floors with me.

I drove to Lowe's tonight to buy a wider and longer Self Lock taper measure and then spent about 45 minutes looking at the BR-111 hardwood board samples. Unfortunately, the 5" wide Triangulo Engineered wide board sample was missing and the solid wood in the 5.50" did not show enough of the color variation and it was difficult to tell on such a small board and that extra 1/2" confused me even more since now it looked so wide despite looking so beautiful in the pictures I keep seeing.

But, I did learn that the solid wood Brazilian Cherry 3" boards were so beautiful and the 3.25" solid wood boards were even prettier. The 5/16th engineered BR-111 boards with Hence, I learned that even 3" is pretty when it is solid wood. So now I feel better about my reaction when I saw my neighbor's floor since I know I saw someone else's 3" wide Brazilian Cherry floors that were solid wood last month that were beautiful. Another home I looked at had 3.5" Brazilian Cherry floors I also loved.

I guess I wish the wood I am looking at in the engineered sawn cut came in a 3.5" wide to a 4.25" wide board.

I am going to sleep on this and also see if anyone posts more pictures before I make a decision.

My living room/dining room long big room (that is separated with a half of a wall high that is also only half of a wall long with a beautiful fancy rounded pole in the middle of the room that is on top of the landing on the half of a wall and goes up to the ceiling.. I find it very pretty in a bright white) that I use as my home office is 388 square feet (the width is only 12' 3")and the family room is about 196 square feet (the width is only 12'3") but has a cathedral ceiling. Hence, the rooms are not that big.

I decided tonight to go with the 5" wide planks but I prefer to float them than glue them down after walking on a neighbor's floating floor and another neighbor's glued down floor over the concrete slab. My decision was based on pictures, the fact I will have longer boards with less seams and feeling the family room with the cathedral ceiling looked best in the 4" wide plank samples I have here of Maple stained cherry so I am hoping the Brazilian Cherry floors will look nice in the 5" wide planks. I still wish the BR-111 Triangulo Engineered Wood floors came in a 4" width which would be better for my size rooms.

Thank you everyone. I will order tomorrow when the installer calls me back so I can find out what reducers and T-moldings I must order as well as if he is getting the glue between the boards and the floating pad or if I am buying that also.

This is 5" mahogany floor we installed on a job last summer.

This is a 3.25" mahogany floor we installed about 2005:

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This is my 3.5" antique pine kitchen floor:

Casey

sombreuil_mongrel, all three floors are beautiful to me so I guess I like both the 3.25" wide planks and the 5" wide planks.

Your kitchen floor is gorgeous! In fact all three floors seems to have random length boards with several of the boards nice and long. I guess that is what I am afraid of is that the BR-111 3.25" wide floors will have too many short boards but seeing all these pictures is making me realize that both size widths are beautiful and I will be so happy once my floor in installed.

Lynn  What made you decide to float instead of glue? It was my understanding that if you float, the floor my not feel "tight" in all areas as you walk on the floor  if you know what I mean. IÂm a looooooong way from making that decision, so I am curious how you made it.

Jeri

Hi jeri, I have not talked with the installer yet on my decision in no longer gluing the floor but floating it. My neighbor has a floated 5"" wide Merbau hardwood floor and I like the way it feels when I walk on it. It has no hollow sound and feels solid but has a tiny bit if cushion so it does not feel like I am walking on my hard tiles in my two foyer areas. My other neighbor's very dark 5" wide plank floor feels very hard to walk on since it was glued.

I am hoping my installer agrees with me and feels it is OK to float the 5" wide Triangulo Engineered 1/2" thick with a 3 MM sawn cut veneer of Brazilian Cherry on top floor ( have a concrete floor and installing a sub-floor would cause problems in my door ways and raise my floor much higher than my Porcelain Tile foyers so I decided to go with an engineered wood floor that has a sawn cut veneer). I just hope I can refinish it if I ever need to since BR-111 says you can refinish the floor a few times and I am hoping the floating installation does not affect this.

Msgreatdeals, are you ordering the BR-111 online or at a local store? I feel you would be much happier with a sawn cut the Triangulo engineered version has since it looks more like a solid wood floor while the regular engineered wood floor lacks the beauty of real wood in my opinion. Some very trust online places have the Triangulo floor close to the price of the regular engineered floor with the thin wear layer from local stores like Lowe's.

I loved the Amendoim wood also so it was a difficult decision for me but I had my heart set on a reddish floor and I don't like a lot of knots so I decided to go with the Brazilian Cherry floors. I know I would be happy with either wood since I like some color variation.

We are planning to do wood floating floors in another house we own. From the research so far, it seems the difference is in the underlayment. If you don't go with a good quality underlayment, you will get the "clicking" sound that would make the whole installation seem cheap even if it's not.

Does anyone have experience with this?

Lynn2006, I'm still on the fence. Think I will wait for you to post pictures when your floor is in. I was going to order online as they have a very good price and free shipping right now but I'm just afraid to order cherry. I don't know how it's going to look up against my medim brown cabinets. I probably should go with a oak that is red free and a little lighter than my cabinets since 90% of my furniture is oak! Oak mantel and stairways too.

msgreatdeals, I have cherry furniture in my home office but and medium brown stained oak stair railings in my family room. I will post pictures for you when my floors are complete. It think the Amendoim (the Triangulo version of BR-111's engineered wood flooring so you have the Sawn Cut for the real wood floor affect) would look nice against your medium brown cabinets.

My neighbor ordered from TrueHardwoods.com and the boxes came with no damage and the wood was in great shape that their was a lot extra. I would trust this online store from seeing the wood and the boxes and from their dealings with me. I will let you know more when the wood arrives.

Thank you Lynn. I can hardly wait. Did they say how long it would take for the flooring to arrive? I decided to have my kitchen ceiling redone and the rooms painted that the new flooring is going in before doing the floor so this will work out fine. Probably a month before I'm ready to order.

msgreatdeals, What paint colors are your planning on using? I also would like to see pics when you are done.

I am thinking of painting my room also since the prior painter never painted behind the file cabinets and there are areas he did not paint despite being paid since the prior wall color was similar and it was late at night and he wanted to be paid. He promised to come back after my busy season to do a second coat but he ignores my calls. I love the BM Bone White pearl finish in my family room and kitchen with the bright white trim. The Linen White in the two room home office (living room/dining room long room combination) I wish was a little darker. I want to paint these two rooms the Bone White also but really wish my floor was in so I could see the effect but I know it will be difficult to move the file cabinets once they are in. I wonder what I should do about this? I need a paint that has just about no Vocs since I had a lot of problems after the last paint job over 2 years ago breathing.

My 5" Wide BR-111 Triangulo Engineered Brazilian Cherry Floors arrived today and are in the boxes acclimating. I will post pictures once they are installed. I ended up going with the 5" after seeing all these pictures and I thank all of you. I really do like most widths of hardwood floors I found out but I decided the less seams the better off I was at keeping them clean so I went with the wider board.