Bevelled vs Square Edge Prefinished Flooring: Why We Stopped Making One of Them

If you want a floor that still looks new in five years, choose a bevelled board. We sold square edge prefinished flooring for about twelve months, around five years ago, and we stopped — not because it looked bad, but because of what it looked like eighteen months later.

This is the question I get asked most often on the showroom floor. It has been the same question for twenty years. What follows is what I tell people, including the part where I got it wrong.

What square edge actually is

A square edge prefinished board has no bevel. Where two boards meet, the surface runs straight across, so the floor reads as one continuous plane rather than a run of defined boards. It looks very close to a raw floor that has been sanded and polished on site.

I thought that was the answer. A prefinished floor with the look of a site-finished one, installed in days rather than weeks, with none of the dust. So we tried it.

The way it is made matters, and almost nobody explains it. The board is coated first. Then it is run through a tongue and groove machine to cut the profile, and that machining is what produces the tight, clean edge people admire.

But the machine cuts through the coating. By the time the board comes off it, the tongue, the groove, the ends and the underside are raw timber. Five of the six faces are exposed. The only sealed surface left is the top.

Why we stopped making it

We were offered the technology by a manufacturer who wanted our business. They already had our structure; they told us we would sell more floors with a square edge on it. It was new, and I believed people would be impressed by it. We said yes.

We sold it for six to nine months, twelve at the outside. Somewhere between one and two hundred floors went into Perth homes.

The calls started inside a year.

What came back

I did the site inspections myself. I went to the houses, and the same thing was in front of me every time.

The floors were ageing prematurely. Not damaged in any dramatic way — just old. Small chips along the board edges. Fine fractures where the edge met the next board. In some homes the edges had swollen where something had been spilt, or where a wet mop had been used, and the timber had taken the moisture up through the raw sides.

None of it came from abuse. This was ordinary life in an ordinary house.

The reason is that a square edge has no resilience in it. There is nothing to absorb a knock, and no coating on the part of the board that is most exposed. A floor that was handsome at handover looked worn and cheap eighteen months in. That is the opposite of what we build.

The splinters

The part I had not anticipated was people getting splinters.

Australian standards allow up to 0.2mm of lipping between square edge boards. Two tenths of a millimetre sounds like nothing, and on a drawing it is nothing. On a floor it is a sharp arris standing slightly proud of its neighbour, and socks catch it. We had customers picking fine splinters out of their feet.

Understandable, in hindsight. That is what a sharp square edge does. It did not occur to me before we sold the floor, and it should have.

What we did about it

Nobody's floor was pulled up. Everyone who bought one is still living on it today.

Where the edges had suffered, we rubbed the floors back and put a professional recoat of polyurethane over them at our cost. That solved it. No complaints came back afterwards, from anyone, about the edges or the splinters.

It was inconvenient for those clients and it was expensive for us. But the recoats were not the reason we stopped. We stopped because I do not want to sell a floor that needs remedial work in its second year to keep looking the way it did on day one. We install floors that are beautiful for life, not for six months.

How a Lifewood bevel is made

Our boards carry a micro bevel of 0.2 to 0.3mm, on all four edges — the two long sides and both ends. It is small enough that you register it as a line between boards rather than a groove.

The sequence is the part that matters, and it is the exact inverse of the floor that failed.

The bevel is machined into the board before any top coat goes on. Then the four edges — both sides and both ends — are hand sprayed with polyurethane. Then the board is sanded, and the top and bottom coats are applied.

So the bevel itself is sealed, twice: once from the side, once from the top. Every one of the six faces has coating on it. Nothing on the board is raw. Spill something and it sits on a finished surface, wherever it lands.

The same specification runs across both Stabilised Solid® and Nature's Steel®. The edge is only half the story of how a board is built — what sits underneath the surface decides how the floor behaves over decades.

Seasonal movement: the argument runs backwards

People in the industry will tell you a bevel makes seasonal gaps more obvious. In my experience the truth is the reverse.

Perth summers do this to every timber floor. Take a north-facing window with sun on the boards through February. The timber gives up moisture and shrinks a little, then takes it back in winter and closes up again. That is normal and it is what timber has always done.

On a square edge floor that movement reads as a clean open line between two boards, and your eye goes straight to it. On a bevelled floor the movement happens inside a shadow line that was already there. You do not see it.

If you want a floor that does not visibly change with the seasons, the bevel is the answer, not the problem.

The look, and what a bevel signals now

I will give square edge its due. Out of the box it does look like one unbroken piece of timber, and that is a premium look. It just does not stay premium.

The objection I hear is that the V lines make a floor look like laminate. Ten years ago that had some force. It has since turned completely around.

Most of what is sold as flooring in Australia now is not timber at all. Hybrids, laminates, plastic planks with a photograph of oak printed on them. And they are square edged, because the material is plastic and there is no reason to bevel it. The square edge has become the tell of a fake floor, not a real one.

The bevel is now what says the board is timber. It defines each board as a separate piece of a tree, which is what it is.

There is a practical side to that as well. A bevelled prefinished board can be cut out and replaced if it is ever damaged, because the bevel gives the repair somewhere to land. On a site-sanded floor you cannot do that. This is part of why premium homes and luxury builders across Australia have moved to prefinished.

If you are weighing this up against cost, the price guide sets out ranges by species and construction so you can compare properly before you come in, and we have written separately on what drives hardwood flooring costs in Australia. Download the price guide.

What a bevel costs you

One real downside, and it is about cleaning.

If you wet mop a floor, you are not removing dirt. You are moving it around in water, and some of it will end up in the bevel. It comes out easily, but it should not be going in.

You see this in restaurants. Plenty of oil, plenty of foot traffic, and a mop and bucket at the end of the night. The bevels load up, and the floor looks tired long before the timber is.

In a house it is a non-issue with the right method. A microfibre mop or a robot mop lifts dirt out rather than pushing it along. That is all it takes.

The other thing worth saying: a bevel does not fix a bad subfloor. It is more forgiving of one — the standards allow 0.5mm of lipping on bevelled boards against 0.2mm on square edge, precisely because the shadow line absorbs it — but the floor still wants a flat substrate underneath it.

Fifteen years out, the bevel goes anyway

Here is the part almost nobody thinks about when they are agonising over the V line.

Customers come back to us for a recoat at about ten years. A recoat is another layer of polish over the top to freshen the floor, and it keeps the bevel. It is the cheapest and cleanest way to make a floor look new again.

At around fifteen years, some choose a full resand. That takes the bevel off, and the floor comes back as one continuous surface, exactly the look the square edge board promised. How many times a floor can take that depends entirely on the thickness of the timber above the core, which is why the wear layer is the number to ask about before anything else.

Except now you can have it safely. By then the floor has been through fifteen Perth summers. Every bit of expansion and contraction, every difference between the room with the north window and the room without one, has settled. The floor is stable. Sand it at that point and it looks extraordinary.

So the honest way to think about a bevel is as something that does a job for the first fifteen years, and then gets removed once the timber no longer needs it. Square edge from day one asks the board to do without that protection during the only period it really needs it.

How to check a board in any showroom

You can test this yourself, on a sample, in about ten seconds.

Look at the edge of the board — the tongue, the groove, the underside. Is there coating on it, or is it bare timber? Then run a finger along the top edge. A sealed bevel feels smooth and finished. An uncoated square edge feels sharp.

In my experience most of the industry does not coat the four edges or the underside at all. A cheap coating on the top surface and nothing else. That board is open to moisture, spills and humidity on five sides, and the customer has no way of knowing unless they look.

So look. Then put ours beside it and look again. The difference is not a marketing point — it is there so the board can survive Australian family life, where nobody takes their shoes off, people have parties, and there are kids and dogs and spills.

Three questions worth asking any supplier:

• Are all four edges sealed, and the underside?
• Is the bevel machined before the coating, or is the profile cut after?
• What is the lipping tolerance on this board, and what happens to a spill that sits on a joint overnight?

Common questions about bevelled and square edge flooring

Is a bevelled or a square edge floor better?

For a prefinished floor in an Australian home, bevelled. A square edge has no resilience at the board edge, so ordinary wear chips and fractures it, and the floor looks aged within a year or two. A micro bevel absorbs that wear, masks seasonal movement and can be cut out and replaced if a board is ever damaged.

Why did Lifewood stop making square edge prefinished flooring?

Lifewood sold a square edge prefinished board for about twelve months around five years ago, across roughly one to two hundred Perth floors, and stopped. Customers began calling inside a year with chipped and swollen board edges, and some were getting fine splinters through their socks. The affected floors were rubbed back and recoated at Lifewood's cost, and the product was discontinued.

Why does a square edge board fail at the edges?

A square edge prefinished board is coated first, then run through a tongue and groove machine to cut the profile. The machining removes the coating from the tongue, the groove, the ends and the underside, so five of the board's six faces are raw timber. Moisture from a spill or a wet mop goes straight into the timber at the edge.

How big is the bevel on a Lifewood board?

It is a micro bevel of 0.2 to 0.3 millimetres, on all four edges — both long sides and both ends. The bevel is machined into the board before any top coat is applied, then the four edges are hand sprayed with polyurethane and the top and bottom coats go on. Every one of the six faces is sealed.

Do bevelled floorboards collect dirt?

Only with the wrong cleaning method. A wet mop moves dirt around in water rather than lifting it, and some of it settles in the bevel — which is why the problem shows up in restaurants and rarely in houses. A microfibre mop or a robot mop removes the dirt instead of pushing it along.

Does a bevel make seasonal gaps more obvious?

It does the opposite. When boards shrink under a north-facing window through a Perth summer, a square edge floor shows a clean open line between boards and the eye goes straight to it. On a bevelled floor that movement happens inside a shadow line that was already there.

Does the bevel disappear when the floor is sanded?

A recoat at around ten years keeps the bevel; a full resand at around fifteen years usually removes it, and the floor comes back as one continuous surface. By that point the floor has been through fifteen Perth summers and has stopped moving, so the square-edge look can be had safely — which is the look a square edge board promises on day one and cannot hold.

How can I tell whether a board's edges are sealed?

Look at the tongue, the groove and the underside of a sample board and see whether there is coating on them or bare timber, then run a finger along the top edge — a sealed bevel feels smooth, an uncoated square edge feels sharp. Ask the supplier three things: whether all four edges and the underside are sealed, whether the bevel is machined before the coating or the profile cut after it, and what the lipping tolerance on the board is.

What I would put in my own house

The question to ask yourself is not which board looks better in the showroom. It is what you want the floor to look and feel like after you have lived on it for a year.

If you are finishing a commercial fitout or an apartment you intend to sell, and how it looks in eighteen months is somebody else's problem, square edge will photograph beautifully for the listing. That is a legitimate use for it.

If it is your home, and you want to walk in and feel proud of the floor, I would choose bevelled. It looks better over time, it performs better, it lasts longer. No splinters. No moment of panic when a glass goes over. A floor you enjoy rather than manage.

That is the whole argument. You should not have to change how you live to suit your floor.

Come and stand on both at our Osborne Park showroom — we keep sample boards you can run a finger along, and you can decide with the timber in front of you rather than a photograph of it.

— Mark Hutchison, founder, Lifewood