Core / Base Board

Core / Base Board – Glossary

This is the base or core board to the top of which the wear layer is applied.

Core or base boards vary in thickness depending on the overall size and the thickness of the wear layer. Typically they are between 8mm and 14mm thickness.

Core boards are often made from multi layer ply-woods (generally the greater the number of ply’s the better) but can also take the form of a long-grain bottom layer with a short-grain middle. The long-grain wear layer then balances the long-grain bottom layer under the neutral short-grain middle.

In the case of Oak floor boards a hybrid engineered / solid construction is available in the market place where an Oak long-grain top layer sits over an Oak short-grain middle layer on a balancing long-grain Oak backing. This type of Oak floor board could reasonably and quite correctly be described as solid or engineered Oak flooring.