Awards

BEST LIMITED SPECIES

National Wood Flooring Association

2016 Wood Floor of The Year - Natural Wood Floors & Design (Miami)

CONTINUUM

Natural Wood Floor Studio also is known as Natural Wood Floors & Design (Miami) won the prestigious 2016 Wood Floor of The Year Award - Best Limited Species, for this staircase in white Oak.

Naturally Stunning

Most wood flooring contractors would run away from a 15-inch plank wood floor on a slab in Miami, particularly when it involves custom treads and risers in a metal staircase that never actually touches the floor. Natural Wood Floors & Design (Miami) owner Fernando Avila says, "We are not like a regular wood floor company."

Hovering Staircase

This award-winning project in Miami Beach epitomizes that idea with a custom-fabricated staircase that hovers over the floor. The Natural team worked with the designers and architects, as well as the metal fabricators, as the design for the entire space was developed.

The room is so large that Avila recommended the ultra-wide flooring to suit the scale of the space. The client wanted to see no character in the floor and liked the color of European white oak. She also wanted it to be unfinished. "The client didn't want any finish—she wanted it to look very natural. So, we convinced them to use the Woca so it would have some protection," explains Natural Marketing and Sales Manager Lisa Poklop.

Best Limited SPecies

The fact that Natural Wood Floors just won its third Wood Floor of The Year trophy puts an exclamation point on that statement. Since the company's founding in 1989, Avila has encouraged local architects and designers to consider wood flooring an integral part of their designs from the conception of a project, and to push the boundaries of species, color, width or concept.

EUROPEAN WHITE OAK

Fabricating each individual step and riser for the hovering stairs was a particular challenge. "Making the treads out of different pieces and another piece for the riser—having that all match and meeting the expectations of the client who wanted to not see any grain—was challenging," Poklop says. Avila credits the experience of his team, most of whom have been at the company for more than 10 years, for succeeding with another unusual project. "The owners and the architects—everybody is extremely happy," Avila says. "I was really proud."

BEST RESIDENTIAL

National Wood Flooring Association 

2014 Wood Floor of The Year - Natural Wood Floors & Design (Miami)

The floors that receive Wood Floor of the Year status tend to be show-stoppers, from huge medallions to palace floors and cosmic spirals. They're all floors that demand your attention, and for good reason.

But Fernando Avila, whose company Natural Wood Floors & Design has done a number of eclectic floors for the rich and famous near its headquarters in Miami, approached the project that would eventually net him this year's Best Residential Wood Floor of the Year award with humility. The homeowner wanted a fantastic wood floor, certainly, but he didn't want any of his guests to actually look at.

The homeowner is an art collector. On the house's white walls are colorful paintings, kaleidoscopic glass shells and a hanging bloom of jellyfish with silver heads and LED-lit tails. The floors, he told Avila, should only draw attention to the art.

"The most important part is the art," Avila said, adding that the company wanted to effectively make the floor invisible. "[W]e wanted the floor to be more like a gallery."

Avila, in cooperation with the space's designer, started planning: Wood color would be important; maple was out-too yellow. Wood grain couldn't be too strong. The planks had to be wide. The stain, subtle.

They eventually found the perfect material in riftsawn white oak, cut into planks 10 inches wide to give the floor a clean look. Because it was a high-end client, Avila scrutinized each board.

Natural Wood Floors & Design installed 4,000 square feet, which covered two stories and stairs, in two weeks. The sanding took 10 days. Each board seems to blend into the next, giving the appearance that the floor is one solid piece. It's a testament to the company's expertise that, when given a directive to be unnoticeable, the result is still an award-winning floor.-A.A.