Why your kitchen probably shouldn't have real wood

We get asked this every week in Houston: can I put real hardwood in my kitchen? The short answer is yes, you technically can. The honest answer is that most people who do it end up regretting it within about five years — and it's almost always for the same three reasons.

Kitchens are the wettest room in the house that isn't a bathroom. Between the dishwasher, the fridge line, the sink and the fact that you're constantly carrying full pots around, water finds a way onto the floor. Solid wood does not forgive water. It cups, it crowns, it opens up seams, and eventually the finish blows out around the sink.

Even if you never spill a drop, our climate is doing damage in the background. Houston swings between 40% and 80% indoor humidity depending on the season and how hard your AC is working. Solid wood expands and contracts with that swing — sometimes by a full millimetre across a plank. In a kitchen, where you also have heat from the range and cold from the fridge, that movement is amplified.

Engineered hardwood is more dimensionally stable, but its wear layer is thin. Once you dent it hauling a case of LaCroix out of the pantry, you can't sand it out.

Nine times out of ten we point kitchen clients at a good porcelain plank tile that looks like wood, or a high-end rigid-core LVP with a 22-mil wear layer. Porcelain is basically waterproof, tough enough for dropped cast iron, and the modern wood-look prints are genuinely convincing at standing height. LVP is warmer underfoot and floats over your existing subfloor with almost no prep.

If you have your heart set on the look and feel of real wood, put it everywhere except the kitchen and use a break at the doorway. It's not the design choice people expect, but it'll still look great in ten years — which is more than we can say for a hardwood kitchen with two kids and a golden retriever.