Hickory hardwood flooring in Toronto — the hardest floor on the shelf

Specification

The assembled specification

Botanical name

Carya ovata (shagbark hickory) and related species in the group

Side hardness, 12% MC

1,880 lbf for shagbark hickory — the hardest of the six (USDA Forest Products Laboratory, Wood Handbook Table 5-3b)

Ontario range

Southern Ontario, including along the St. Lawrence River and into Quebec (Ontario Tree Atlas)

Ontario commercial status

Not among the seven principal tolerant hardwoods named by the Ministry of Natural Resources, and not a separate line in the 2021 growing-stock table

US growing stock

5.1% of the US total, 742.3 million m³ (American Hardwood Export Council)

US annual growth against harvest

14.6 million m³ grown against 6.0 million m³ harvested per year

Milled in Ontario

Superior Flooring / Herwynen Sawmill, Rockwood, Ontario, lists hickory among its five species

Flooring grades published

Special Clear, Select, No. 1 Common, No. 2 Common (NWFA/NOFMA hickory-pecan rules)

Failure modes

Where this goes wrong

• The American Hardwood Export Council declines to publish a single hardness figure for hickory, noting that mechanical properties vary within the group. The 1,880 lbf figure is specifically shagbark. A board sold as "hickory" is not guaranteed to be that species.
• Hickory’s colour range within one board — pale sapwood against dark heartwood — is its defining character. Clients who have only seen a single sample board are frequently surprised by the assembled floor. Show a laid-out area, not a plank.
• It is hard on tooling and hard on the sanding sequence. A refinishing quote priced as though it were oak is a quote that has not read the species.

Answer

What we recommend

Hickory is the right specification where maximum dent resistance and strong visual character are both wanted — a busy family floor, a rural or transitional interior, a rental that has to survive tenants. It is the wrong specification where a quiet, uniform floor is the goal, unless the Special Clear grade is being bought deliberately.

• View a laid-out area before ordering, never a single board.
• Confirm the grade in writing; the character range between Special Clear and No. 2 Common is larger in hickory than in any other species here.

Also asked

Related questions this guide answers

Is hickory the hardest hardwood flooring?

Among the species commonly installed in the Greater Toronto Area, yes. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory publishes shagbark hickory at 1,880 lbf side hardness at 12% moisture content, against hard maple at 1,450, white oak at 1,360, white ash at 1,320, red oak at 1,290 and black walnut at 1,010. Note that the American Hardwood Export Council publishes no single figure for hickory because properties vary within the group.

Is hickory flooring too busy for a small room?

That is an aesthetic judgement, and it depends on grade rather than species. The NWFA/NOFMA hickory-pecan rules publish a Special Clear grade for a far more uniform face, alongside Select, No. 1 Common and No. 2 Common with progressively more colour contrast. Specify the grade rather than arguing about the species.

Can hickory be sourced in Ontario?

Shagbark hickory grows in Southern Ontario according to the province’s own tree atlas, and Superior Flooring at Rockwood, Ontario lists hickory among the five species it mills. What Ontario does not publish is whether hickory is commercially harvested in the province at any scale — it is not among the seven principal tolerant hardwoods and does not appear as a separate line in the growing-stock inventory. We treat that as evidence of non-prominence, not evidence of zero harvest.

Provenance

Where every claim on this page comes from

• Provenance — tolerant hardwoods
• Provenance — manufacturing
• Provenance — not published
• Grade — nwfa appearance

Framework pillars this bears on

• Pillar 3 — Product specification

Once this is decided

What the work actually is

Hardwood Flooring Installation · Hardwood Floor Refinishing · Dust-Free Floor Sanding · Hardwood Floor Restoration · Custom Inlays & Borders · Stair Refinishing

Prices for all three bands are published before you call — hardwood flooring in Toronto for a new floor, refinishing for an existing one, stairs for the part usually left out of the quote. If the floor is already cupping, gapping or lifting, this is a diagnosis rather than a decision: what your floor is telling you.

Proof, with the numbers

Where these decisions were made on real jobs

Each publishes the readings and the reasoning, not only the result — which is what makes them worth reading next to a guide rather than instead of one.

Every case study publishes what was measured, not only what was achieved — all of them are here, and each one names the substrate, the species, the readings and the protocol it followed.

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