{"id":1010,"date":"2014-02-17T20:04:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T20:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/urbanfloor.com\/blog\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2017-10-20T18:30:53","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T18:30:53","slug":"janka-hardness-test-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/janka-hardness-test-matter","title":{"rendered":"What is the Janka Hardness Test and Does It Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may have heard of this whole &#8220;<strong><a title=\"Janka Hardness Test\" href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/Janka-Hardness-Test.html\">Janka Hardness Test<\/a><\/strong>\u201d business, but aren\u2019t exactly sure what it is or what it means to you. No problem, we\u2019ll try and help you out.<\/p>\n<p>You should know that the Janka Hardness Test applies to both\u00a0<a title=\"Engineered Wood Flooring\" href=\"http:\/\/urbanfloor.com\/blog\/engineered-wood-flooring-and-its-benefits\">engineered wood flooring<\/a>\u00a0as well as solid wood flooring. Engineered wood floors typically feature a plywood base with a solid wood overlay, or \u201cveneer\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1011\" src=\"http:\/\/urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Screen-Shot-2014-02-17-at-12.00.05-PM.png\" alt=\"Janka Hardness Test\" width=\"305\" height=\"173\" \/>So what exactly is the Janka Hardness Test? It\u2019s quite simple. An 11.28 millimeter steel ball is forced halfway into various wood species to measure how resistant a species is. A rating is then applied to compare exactly how hard certain hardwood floors really are. A rating of 1290 is used as a baseline to see which woods are soft and which are hard. Ratings above 1290 are considered harder variants and those below 1290 are regarded as softer choices.<\/p>\n<h3>What do these numbers mean to me?<\/h3>\n<p>The harder the wood, the more trauma it can take before it dents. Harder woods are more forgiving of careless mistakes. Harder woods are also forgiving of large pets and kids that roughhouse. Harder woods are better for heavier traffic scenarios but come with a downside: they don\u2019t deal as well in dry climates and have the potential to split.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, you want to choose the wood species that looks best to you, regardless of Janka ratings. If you like a certain type of hardwood because you believe it will match your home better or make it easier to work with, then that should be the one you pick. Also, it\u2019s important to understand that the\u00a0<strong><a title=\"Hardwood Floor Finish\" href=\"http:\/\/urbanfloor.com\/blog\/choosing-hardwood-floor-finish\">finish\u00a0of a\u00a0hardwood floor<\/a><\/strong> is the real defense against scratches and the like.<\/p>\n<p>Read more about selecting a <a title=\"hardwood floor species\" href=\"http:\/\/urbanfloor.com\/blog\/how-to-choose-the-best-species-for-your-flooring\">wood species<\/a> here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may have heard of this whole &#8220;Janka Hardness Test\u201d business, but aren\u2019t exactly sure what it is or what it means to you. No problem, we\u2019ll try and help you out. You should know that the Janka Hardness Test [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,349,356],"tags":[357,358],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-educational","category-engineered-hardwood-floors","category-solid-hardwood-floors","tag-janka-hardness-test","tag-janka-hardness-test-for-hardwood-floors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2474,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/2474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urbanfloor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}