Tracy Pulley
The Tennessean

When Jamie Beckwith started planning the decor for her home in Franklin, Tenn., she knew it needed to complement the house’s old-world characteristics. When it came to flooring, she chose materials that showed their handmade origins.

From the wide planks of hand-hewn distressed walnut in the living room to the tumbled travertine in the foyer, Beckwith’s floors reflect not only her home’s personality but also an ever-growing trend in homebuilding toward high-end natural materials that are low maintenance with minimal environmental impact.

“Everybody is going to a handcrafted look, getting away from flat flooring,” says Dan Antes, owner of Nashville, Ind.-based Distinctive Hardwood Floors. “Natural, organic texture is a big thing.”

Antes, whose work was featured in December’s Blueprint magazine, uses reclaimed wood when he can. “For that project we used oak reclaimed from barns throughout the South,” he says. “It’s expensive … but an even more expensive option is using urban timber, working with cities to gather individual trees that are cut down for electric companies or construction.”

Materials matter

The green trend is evident in Nashville as homeowners choose renewable resource materials such as bamboo and cork flooring in greater numbers. Traci Henry, owner of furniture store and design service At Home Nashville, has seen demand for recycled and organic goods increase tremendously in the past year. “Everything from cork to bamboo to reclaimed timbers, and definitely more big-plank exotic woods,” she says. She’s designed several floors that bring outdoor elements into the home as well.

Bamboo and cork “are niche items, but we are seeing this trend grow more and more,” says Abby Buford, a spokeswoman for Lowe’s, the national retailer.

“Bamboo has a high durability,” she says, and it is easy to harvest. Not only is cork soft to the touch and hypoallergenic, it can be harvested “multiple times without cutting down a tree,” Buford says.

Trend for texture

At Erwin Tile and Marble, owner Joe Erwin has seen trends come and go in his 20 years in the business. His favorite floor material these days, porcelain tile, doesn’t fit into the natural materials trend, but he’s a strong proponent nonetheless. “Porcelain has come so far,” Erwin says. “It looks like any kind of stone or marble you could imagine; each tile is made to look unique, and it’s more durable, requires less maintenance than real stone.”

Erwin does like the trend toward unique flooring. He hasn’t built cookie-cutter floors for clients in a long time.

Although stone maintains steady popularity as a flooring material, in Nashville wood is still the mainstay for most upscale homes. Chuck Crispin, craftsman and designer of the 2007 “Floor of the Year” creates distinctive wood floors for custom homes across the country. “We’re doing a hand-scraping technique that removes the softer wood and gives a texture to the floor,” Crispin says. “We burnish it with a natural coat of oil and finish with wax.”

Crispin says homeowners nationwide are moving away from floors coated with polyurethane and back to waxing. “With polyurethane, what you see is what you get,” he says. “If you get a scratch in it you have to refinish the whole floor … . Wax is repairable over time, and a scratch looks like a natural part of the floor. It’s beautifully imperfect.”

Tread on me

Reclaimed wood

Advantages: Reclaimed or repurposed wood is environmentally friendly, requiring no trees to be cut down.

Disadvantages: Reclaimed wood is much more expensive and requires more time and patience than traditional wood flooring.

Bamboo

Advantages: Bamboo is a grass and highly renewable, as bamboo plants grow fast and require little fertilizer or pesticides.

Bamboo flooring is strong, durable and easy to maintain.

Disadvantages: It can be expensive. Also, the chemical formaldehyde is often used as a binder in bamboo flooring.

Cork flooring

Advantages: Cork, another renewable resource, is cheaper than bamboo, costing about the same as traditional wood flooring materials.

Cork flooring comes from the bark of cork oak trees in Spain and Portugal. Whole trees are not harvested.

Cork floors are easy to install, and insulate both sound and temperature. They’re resistant to mold, mildew and scratches.

Disadvantages: Cork floors sometimes reacts to changes in humidity, and they tend to yellow with age.

Concrete

Advantages: Concrete is a good substitute for natural stone, which is not renewable. It is inexpensive and comes in a variety of styles.

Disadvantages: Concrete is hard and cold to the touch.

Marmoleum

Advantages: Marmoleum is made from natural materials, like linseed oil, pine resins, chalk and clay, rather than vinyl. It is nontoxic and biodegradable

Marmoleum can last decades. It is impervious to liquids and stains and comes in a variety of styles and colors.

Disadvantages: It is difficult to install.