This article analyses the compatibility between the 20 mm thick prefinished engineered hardwood flooring and the solid unfinished border and medallion inlays.
The hardwood floor border inlay (also called ”wood floor borders” or ”parquet borders”) shown in the left side of the image has a 10 mm (around 3/8 in) thickness. This border is built as solid (top-to-bottom from a single piece of solid hardwood as you can observe in the image) being compatible with surrounding flooring preferably built the same way (whether they are hardwood floors or parquet floors). The inlays*(*-we talk about our inlays in this case) are delivered unfinished (no finish applied to the surface). The installation is done in the traditional way, finish being applied in the final phase to provide protection from tear-and-wear and air bound moisture.
In the right side of the above image there is a two layers prefinished, engineered hardwood flooring - a plank with a 180mm (7 1/4 inches) width. This engineered flooring is composed from a sandwich of two layers. The top layer is made of the precious wood (in our case it is 6 mm thick Oak) and the below layer is a plywood (usually used is the Birch plywood) whose function is to provide support and dimensional stability of the product. The fact that this hardwood flooring comes prefinished (with a layer of factory-applied finish) makes it usually incompatible with the unfinsihed inlays.
Note: to install such a prefinished hardwood floor with the unfinished border or medallion inlay for a quality finish outcome it would require the sanding of the entire installed surface including the inlays, obviously. To obtain uniformity the prefinished's factory finish will be removed and replaced with the one applied at the installation place. A process not impossible but that usually doesn't happen. Our conclusion is: not compatible with the inlays.
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