There are quite a few decisions that you have to make when you are choosing hardwood floors. The two biggest are which type and style of floor is best for your needs. For instance, if you need new flooring in the bathroom you should extensively research your hardwood type options. In general the choice of type will depend on what you are using the floor for. When it comes to style that is going to be based largely on your personal tastes and the look that you are trying to achieve with your hardwood floors.
The first type of hardwood floors that you are going to encounter are solid wood floors. These are floors where each piece that is used is made out of the same piece of wood. This is the kind that you most commonly find in houses. They are a great option because they are easy to install and they allow you to choose the style that you want. You can choose different species of wood, different plank sizes, different stains or different finishes if you want to change the style of a room. The only real disadvantage of these types of floors is that they can't be used in rooms that are below grade.
The other type of hardwood flooring that you are likely to encounter is engineered flooring. This is flooring that is made of several different layers that have been pressed together. This makes them stronger than solid wood floors which makes them suitable for use below grade. Engineered flooring comes in a number of different plies depending on your needs and it is fairly easy to install.
The styles of hardwood floors that are available are based primarily on the width of the planks that are used. The most common style is strip flooring which uses planks that are less than three inches wide. The main reason that is the most common is because it is the least expensive. However strip flooring does also offer the advantage of giving ht illusion of space in a room which makes it popular for smaller rooms. If the planks are more than three inches in width then they style is referred to as plank flooring. The most common widths are between three and six inches but you can get them much wider. As a general rule the wider the planks the more it is going to cost.
There is one other style of hardwood floor available and that is parquet floors. These are floors where rather than having linear planks the flooring comes in pieces of different sizes and shapes that can be used to create all kinds of different designs. This obviously allows you a great deal of freedom to be creative in how you lay your floors out. In general parquet floors will be the most expensive option but that will depend in large part on how complicated of a design you want to have.