36 Best Places to Buy Hardwood Flooring
Where are the Best Places to Buy Hardwood Flooring?
The best places to buy hardwood flooring are big box stores, trusted online retailers, and your local flooring specialists. Big box stores are best for budget flooring, online retailers are best for convenience (and prices), and local flooring stores are great for advice and a greater selection of products.
February 22, 2023, by: Jamie Sandford
In this Home Flooring Pros guide we will list 36 of the best places to buy wood flooring so that you can find the best hardwood floors for you and your budget…information is power!
If you’re looking for hardwood flooring stores near you, the best and easiest place to buy hardwood flooring is your local big box store, their prices are competitive, their range of options pretty broad and their service…well…variable depending on who you talk too!
Nevertheless they serve the needs of many homeowners adequately, but if you don’t look beyond these big national stores then you’re leaving a lot of options on the table.
Specialist retailers who only operate online also offer a large range of products and, as they have much lower overheads, great discounts as well. Certain smaller niche manufacturers also sell direct.
Finally, for the largest choice of wood flooring, you can browse major manufacturers online and then find a local small flooring retailer to order from. Prices might be slightly higher but you often get better, more personalized service from a small family run local retailer.
Online Home Improvement Retailers | Online Flooring Retailers |Â Big Box Stores | Dedicated Independent Flooring Stores
ONLINE HOME IMPROVEMENT RETAILERS
Wayfair is a very interesting online retailer that you should take a look at, they sell over 7 million products for the home from over 7000 suppliers, including of course hardwood flooring. We saw close to (a staggering) 2200 hardwood products on offer, including all the most popular brands and styles, with prices ranging from $2.87 to $20.45 per square foot. A great place to start your research if nothing else!
If Eco-friendly flooring is important to you then one of the best places to find green and sustainable harvested hardwood is Green Building Supply. They sell three quality brands, EcoTimber, Kahrs and US Floors and while the selection is quite limited the options are attractive and reasonably priced between $5 and $10 per square foot.
To Get Started
Green Home Solutions is another great place to buy Eco-friendly floors with a choice of solid, engineered and reclaimed products. They too offer a small but attractive range of well-priced floors from brands including EcoTimber and Trestlewood. You’ll need to contact them for prices on some of their products and the remaining prices online range from $5 to $11 per sq/ft.
Another way to go green is to invest in reclaimed hardwood, not cheap but full of character.
ONLINE FLOORING RETAILERS
The Proximity Mills website is your gateway to 4 different flooring brands that can be purchased via your local independent flooring retailer. This family of brands included Proximity Mills, Newton Flooring, Doma Flooring and Paradiso. All four brands have their own collections of wood flooring at different price points. If you see something you like you can order a sample or find your local retailer.
Prosource is another thriving online building supplies retailer who started out way back in 1991 when they were dedicated to home floor coverings; so it’s safe to say they know what they are doing! ProSource is a wholesaler to building trade professionals so it’s not somewhere a private homeowner can shop direct. Nevertheless that needn’t stop you shopping their range of hardwood flooring and then asking your contractor to purchase the wood flooring for you. ProSource have a great range of hardwood and a great range of popular hardwood brands including Armstrong, Shaw, Mohawk and Teragren.
South Cyprus is another online flooring retailer that we really like. Their website is a pleasure to browse with a great layout and great images that will definitely get your design inspiration juices flowing! They have a good selection of hardwoods from established brands like Anderson, Columbia, Mannington, Mohawk, Mullican and more. And what they lack in quantity they make up for in quality choices with prices between $2.70 to $12.79.
To Get Started
SimpleFLOORS do have 20 showrooms across the US, but as that means they may well not have a store near you we have included them as one of our major online retailers. You can order up to 5 free samples and they are proud of their 99.7% damage-free delivery track record on purchases. The majority of their flooring is engineered hardwood and they have a good selection of hand scrapped products. Interestingly they deal direct with timber producers so don’t sell recognized brand names, but this does mean they can be more competitive on price.
If you’re looking for the lowest flooring prices online then Floors to Your Home is probably the best contender. Why? Because their primary focus is on sourcing and selling quality discontinued and closeout flooring. You can find many well-known quality brands and once a particular product has been sold you won’t be seeing it again! They conveniently show how much square footage they have in stock of each product and at the time of writing they had just over 300 hardwood floors from as little as $0.79 per square foot to $8.79.
This is a dedicated flooring retailer we like, with 54 stores nationwide and with new stores to come. Their physical stores are complimented by a website that is easy to use and easy to navigate. More importantly their focus is on delivering flooring products at wholesale prices to homeowners and contractors alike. At the time of writing they were offering 210 different solid and engineered hardwoods ranging in price from $1.69 to $7.20 per sq/ft
To Get Started
THE BIG BOX HOME IMPROVEMENT STORES
With their big buying power and numerous store locations it’s hard to ignore the presences of the big home improvement stores, especially attractive to DIYer’s and homeowners on a budget. Many buyers feel an added sense of security and convenience buying form such well recognized retailers, but other savvy buyers realise that a wider choice of flooring at better prices can often be found elsewhere.
You can get both solid and engineered hardwood from Home Depot along with everything else you need from underlayment, molding and trim through to tools if you plan to do the work yourself. You can schedule a pro to come and measure your project and they provide installation services. However installation is outsourced to local contractors so why not approach local contractors yourself for free estimates and control the business relationship. The range of brands is good while not exceptional, Bruce, Mokawk, Shaw and Home Legend are among the better known names.
Lowe’s too offers all the accessories that go with a hardwood installation but have a smaller range of products. They stock solid, engineered and locking hardwood from brands such as Bruce, Mullican, US Floors and Mohawk. Again offers measurement and installation via screened independent contractors.
Given the negative press that Lumber Liquidators has received lately it’s questionable whether they currently qualify as one of the best places to buy your hardwood. They have a large range of wood flooring and no doubt there are some good deals to be had, however we do feel that ultimately you tend to get what you pay for in life so take care when considering a hardwood product priced at just 0.99 cents per square foot. Their brands aren’t household names although you may have heard of Bellawood.
Menards has 280 stores across 12 states, while a big well known organisation they seem to be a little off the pace. Their online presence isn’t great, they don’t do social media and their website is pretty uninspiring. In particular we don’t like the photo presentation of their flooring stock and the way they price by carton rather than by square foot. If you have a branch nearby then of course it’s worth popping in to take a look at their current stock.
DEDICATED FLOORING STORES
There are still thousands of small local and family run retailers too numerous to mention here, but later in this article we show you how to find the ones that stock the hardwood flooring brands that you like the most. The number of national retailers that specialize solely in flooring, as opposed to the general home improvement stores, is much more limited, in fact here we offer just three retailers.
Carpet One
Yes, for quite some time now the well-known national carpeting store has been selling all kinds of home flooring including wood, laminate, vinyl and tile. Like quite a few flooring retailers they work exclusively with their own store brands (Invincible, Rustic River and Voyager). They have a decent and very varied range of products covering many different species and installation types. Prices are higher than some others with most hardwood costing between $5 and $12 per square foot.
FlooringAmerica is hybrid flooring retailer, unlike Carpet One they don’t have their own branded stores rather they are composed of many much smaller independent flooring retailers who have signed up to operate with Flooring America. Enter your postcode and you will be redirected to the FlooringAmerica site for your nearest independent retailer. One thing we like about using this site rather than going direct to a local retailers website is the ability to browse hardwood flooring prices; so much more helpful when researching than having to apply for a quote.
To Get Started
FIND A STORE THAT STOCKS THE HARDWOOD FLOORING BRAND YOU WANT
Have you got your heart set on a particular brand of hardwood? Maybe you’re already in love with a particular product. If so the best place to buy your hardwood is the local flooring store that stocks the brand/product you’re after. These local flooring stores are near to you and often family run. All the links below take you to the store locator page for that brand. Just click the link and enter your zip code and you’re good to go! Brands are in alphabetical order.
Boen
Columbia Flooring
Do you know any better places to buy hardwood? Please let us know in the comments below.
You can learn more about engineered hardwood floors in our core guide which covers buying, installation prices and maintenance. And click here for our reviews of the best engineered hardwood flooring brands.
About the Author:
Jamie Sandford
Jamie Sandford is the Owner and Chief Editor of Home Flooring Pros (find out more). After 12 years’ experience in screen and stage set construction, followed by a further 15 years working in the home renovation/remodeling business, he now writes and curates online home improvement advice.
“Buying and installing home flooring should be a fairly straightforward process, but often it isn’t. After more than 15 years experience in home flooring and remodeling, I started Home Flooring Pros in 2013 to help homeowners navigate the often-over complicated process of choosing, buying and installing a home floor. The aim is to save you time and money by helping you to make better floor buying decisions.”