How does bamboo stack up against popular oak floors

Sales of bamboo floors are up. Bamboo is more eco-friendly because it grows much faster than trees.

But how do bamboo floors stack up against oak floors, the most popular kind of wood flooring? Consumer Reports recently tested the floors.

Adam Levine sells flooring and says more and more customers want bamboo instead of traditional wood.

“Bamboo floors definitely have more of a selection now than they ever have. They come in all sorts of colors, all different sizes, all different grain patterns,” he said.

But will bamboo deliver durability? To find out, Consumer Reports tested 21 different types of hardwood flooring, including seven bamboo floors. Prices ranged from $4 to $9 per square foot.

The floors were put through a battery of tests, including an abrasion test that simulates years of foot traffic. Scratch, impact and stain tests were also performed.

“To test stain resistance, we place a wide variety of substances on each of the floors,” said John Galeotafiore with Consumer Reports.

Those substances included everything from ketchup to crayons. In the end, America's favorite type of flooring, oak, scored lowest. It's the Anderson Pacific Cumberland oak floor. Two bamboo floors out-performed all of the hard woods.

"Our tests found that bamboo flooring has gotten much tougher. There's a new manufacturing technique that shreds the bamboo into strands and are glued together with an adhesive that creates less emissions over traditional bamboo flooring,” Galeotafiore said.

The EcoTimber Strand Woven Honey bamboo was top-rated. At $5.50 a square foot, it was a Consumer Reports best buy.