Mullican Hardwood Flooring – Pros/Cons, Costs, Cleaning & Installation
Mullican Hardwood Flooring Report – In a Nutshell
Average Price Per Square Foot: $4.20 – $7.40
Established in 1985, Mullican Flooring offer a fairly large selection of solid and engineered hardwood flooring, in the middle price bracket and sourced within the United States. This flooring company has a reputation for being environmentally friendly and offering value for money, though not always offering the best quality.
February 22, 2023, by: Greca Fotopoulos
In this Mullican flooring report we dig deep to uncover whether Mullican hardwood is a good choice for your flooring project.
COVERED ON THIS PAGE
OPTIONS, SPECS, & STYLES
If you’ve settled on hardwood flooring, then Mullican is certainly a good place to start your research as they have several different styles, colors and finishes to give you a real choice.
They offer three types of hardwood flooring: solid hardwood, engineered hardwood and unfinished engineered hardwood. Each type then divides into various styles (which they confusingly call collections) and colors.
Plank sizes are dependent on the type of hardwood.
The unfinished engineered hardwood – basically red or white oak with smooth texture, ready to be tinted or stained on site – comes in plank widths of 3 1/4” to 7” wide, and random lengths up to 7 feet.
The finished engineered hardwood has a larger width range from 3 to 9“; random lengths of up to 7 feet; and a wide selection of species, both exotic and domestic.
Mullican’s finished engineered hardwood also offers a large choice of colors, including deep black stains, grays and whitewashed looks as well as the classic browns and tans. There is also a wider range of styles here.
The solid hardwoods – exclusively domestic Hickory, Maple, and Oak flooring – come in classic colors and styles, and range in width from 2 1/4” to 5” and also in random lengths up to 7 feet.
Prefinished Engineered Hardwood Vs Prefinished Solid Hardwood Flooring
PROS & CONS
The advantages of Mullican Harwood flooring are:
- a value range of solid and engineered hardwood options, in the middle price bracket
- a good range of species, colors and styles available
- variety of installation methods to suit most types of subfloor
- the unfinished engineered hardwood can be stained on site to suit your tastes and your home.
The disadvantages of Mullican Harwood flooring are:
- cannot be installed in bathrooms
- cannot be installed over radiant heating
- the solid hardwood version cannot be installed in basements
- consumers report dissatisfaction over quality control, see below.
INSTALLATION
There are several different installation methods; the Mullican website gives extensive notes and details regarding all the different methods.
The unfinished and finished engineered floors can be installed as a floating floor using a click-lock method; or the glue down method, or the staple down method.
Mullican solid hardwood flooring should be installed using the nail down or staple down installation method.
WHERE CAN I INSTALL MULLICAN FLOORING?
Mullican engineered hardwood can be installed below, on and above grade; Mullican solid hardwood should not be installed below grade, therefore not in basements.
Mullican flooring, of any type, should never be installed in bathrooms! They are simply not designed to deal with the added level of moisture.
Mullican hardwood is not recommended for installation above radiant heating!
HOW DO I PREPARE AHEAD OF INSTALLATION?
As with all flooring projects, you need to ensure you have a clean, flat subfloor.
You should acclimate your Mullican flooring to your space for several days before installation, ensuring constant temperature and humidity control during, before and after installation.
There are very detailed instructions for room and subfloor prep depending on the installation method.
WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNOW?
Mullican has a bit of a hit and miss reputation regarding quality so one thing to remember is to check the planks thoroughly during installation.
Do not install any boards that are not up to the quality standard you expect.
CLEANING AND MAINTENANCE
Mullican offer detailed information on their website about cleaning. The main take away is that you absolutely want to avoid getting these hardwood floors soaking wet!
Mullican say you should vacuum your hardwood flooring regularly, as opposed to sweeping, so that debris collected between the planks gets picked up. It is essential to use a vacuum cleaner with a hard surface floor attachment.
In an ideal world, Mullican suggest that you leave off mopping your floor entirely – at most do it once a month with an approved hardwood flooring cleaner. Again, it is essential that if you do mop, to keep the mop thoroughly wrung out or squeezed, to avoid excess water.
If you have to deal with a spill or sticky mess, use a damp cloth and then dry the area immediately afterwards with a dry cloth.
DAMAGE PROTECTION
The usual rules apply, as with all hardwood flooring, to place rugs and doormats in high traffic areas; use felt and caster wheels or flat glides under movable furniture.
Mullican also recommend going shoe-less when indoors, and keeping pets claws trimmed.
Finally, moisture levels need to be kept in check and all efforts made to reduce the risk of water damage.
PRICES AND COMPARISONS
We have seen Mullican hardwood flooring retailing anywhere between $4.20 to $7.40 per square foot, but the vast majority of their range retails around $4 to $6 per sq ft.
PRICE COMPARISON
| Brand | Solid Hardwood, per sq.ft. | Engineered Hardwood, per sq.ft. | |
| Bruce | $3.30 – $9.00 | Jasper | $1.50 – $5.00 |
| Blue Ridge | $3.50 – $5.50 | Pergo | $2.90 – $3.50 |
| LM Wood Floors | N/A | LM Flooring | $2.20 – $7.20 |
| Mohawk TecWood | $3.50 – $7.00 | Mohawk SolidWood | $4.50 – $8.50 |
| Mazama | $3.90 – $7.00 | Heritage Mill | $3.50 – $6.25 |
| Mullican | $4.30 – $7.40 | Mullican | $4.20 – $5.60 |
| Somerset Solid Hardwood | $4.50 – $8.50 | Somerset Engineered Hardwood | $6.00 – $8.50 |
| Johnson Solid Hardwood | $4.40 – $8.99 | Johnson Engineered Hardwood | $7.99 – $8.99 |
| Kahrs Hardwood | N/A | Kahrs Hardwood | $6.00 – $14.00 |
| Anderson Tuftex Hardwood | $8.00 – $12.00 | Anderson Tuftex Hardwood | $12.00 – $14.00 |
You can buy Mullican hardwood from local flooring stores and Lowes.
CONSUMER REVIEWS
There are very mixed reviews for Mullican hardwood flooring. On the whole consumers were happy with the overall look and finish.
However, what they were less happy about was the fact that the quality control of boards was inconsistent, and that this increased their budget.
Another concern is that Mullican hardwood flooring reacts very badly to humid conditions. However, Mullican do point out that their products are not suitable for areas of high humidity!
“I have installed Mullican engineered flooring in two rooms in my house: one was floated, the was glue down. Both floors were easy to install and look great.” – Michael
“Good looking floors, but there were too many short pieces in the boxes, which had to be scraped; and reordering more ate into my budget” – Natasha
“We installed wood floors made by Mullican. The quality is not acceptable – there was a lot of waste (about 30%), lots of splinters, and we found a lot of inconsistency in the width and thickness dimensions.” – Lainey
About the Author:
Greca Fotopoulos
Greca is the lead style writer at Home Flooring Pros (more), with a BA in Technical Art, she’s focused on flooring trends, flooring ideas, and flooring brand reviews.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than creating a home that you love. The hardest thing about this job is trying not to covet all the great floors I get to review; if I could remodel my home every month, I would!”
Thinking of Astoria collection. It is very expensive…but 3 mil thick sawn top.
Reading your review with great interest as I am considering purchasing 1000 ft.² of Wexford white oak cascade. I would be very interested in seeing pictures of the boards you described, please!
Thank you
Hi Kim, they’ve got lots of nice photos on their website!
3 years ago my wife and I finally were able to build our retirement home. We immediately started having problems with our new Mullican Floors (mullicanflooring.com). I cannot believe I am having such problems from a company with such a long history! I had the floor professionally installed in a new build home. The company has 37 years experience installing floors and is an approved installer for Mullican Floors. On the first day I was getting splinters when walking in socks. Within the first year the “25 year” finish was coming off in several large areas throughout the house. This certainly isn’t my first wood floor so I use approved cleaner. I started a request for warranty work 2 years ago. After 5 inspections and many delays their answer was that my brand newly built concrete foundation floor caused the splinters and, get this, at some point they have assumed we woke up in the middle of the night and hand-scraped / modified / refinished our new, 3 year old floor for fun. This even though the original finish remains undisturbed in most other areas.