The US wood flooring industry is strong and growing. For 2021 wood flooring is estimated to have accounted for 13.5% of the floor covering market according to Market Insights, up from 11% in 2020.

Michael Martin of ‘FloorDaily’ says that as consumers have spent more time at home during the pandemic, they have developed a desire for high quality products in their home, such as real wood floors.

Also, costs have narrowed between wood floors and wood-look products because of tariffs on China, which produces many wood-look products as well as the raw materials for their plastic cores.

Martin predicts that if hardwood can maintain its lowprice increases while wood-look products increase at a faster pace, we should see a return of more wood in the homebuilding market as well.

Hardwood flooring represented 14% of the floorcovering market in 2014, according to the US FlooReport 2020 produced by Market Insights. By 2019, hardwood flooring dropped below 12%.

Further, in 2016, the total US market share for wood flooring was about $3.249 billion. In 2019, that figure dropped to about $2.933 billion, which represents a loss of about $316 million in just three years.