Wood Flooring with Tile Insets

Q: I am trying to find where I can purchase wood flooring with insets of tile. A friend’s home at Marriott’s resort in Hemet, CA has this in her hallway and it’s gorgeous.
Thank you,
Glenna S.
Brea, CA 92821
A: Glenna this style of flooring has become popular in recent years as a great way to mix two forms of beautiful hard surface flooring. This is actually achieved through installation, and not through a pre-built product. I had a great conversation with Ryan W., our product specialist, about this in regards to some of the techniques used to accomplish this and to confirm my own suspicions that a product is not manufactured to get this great appearance. (If you find out about one please let me know!)
When your floor is to be installed, you will frame out, think like picture frames, the area where you will put in the tiles. This will be done first in order to map out how you wish the tile to appear on your floor. After laying out the frames using planks of the flooring, you will then lay the rest of your floor normally, making your cuts to account for the frames. Once the flooring is complete, user a bit of painters tape (or something similar) to mask off the edges of your frames to protect the flooring from grout or damage. Now just install the tile as you would normally. Once the tile is installed, remove the tape and let the grout cure and you now have a beautiful mix of tile and hardwood flooring. You can also insert other similar hard surface flooring items like mosaics or tempered glass for other really cool looks.
Ryan also mentioned that in many homes, inserting tile is a great way to protect a hardwood floor in something like a dining room, putting tile in the areas where the chairs are moved around or under the table instead of using an area rug. This not only can give your dining room a great look but protect the wood flooring as well by keeping heavy furniture off of the floor.
With the proper application of this technique and some product coordination you can achieve a truly phenomenal look.