About Floor du Jour / Est. 1996
Flooring changes.
The need for straight answers does not.
Floor du Jour is building a genuinely useful U.S. flooring destination: current field guides, transparent editorial analysis, project tools, market context and a preserved record of how the industry talked about floors before today’s products existed.
The mission
Make the entire decision visible.
A floor is not a swatch. It is a product, a room, a substrate, an installation system, a maintenance routine and a future repair problem. Our best work connects all six.
We do not crown a universal winner from one specification. We explain the conditions, show the evidence, name what is still unknown and give readers a checklist they can carry into a showroom or contract conversation.
What lives here
Four layers. One flooring record.
- 01
Evergreen field guides
10 U.S.-focused decision guides covering materials, rooms, moisture, installation and resale—with direct answers, failure patterns, checklists and primary references.
Open the field library → - 02
Current editorial analysis
Articles examine one intent at a time and link claims to visible sources. Distinct voices sharpen the questions without pretending that personality is proof.
How to read the desk → - 03
The historical archive
More than a thousand pieces from 1996–2015 preserve industry history, early web-era advice and period opinions. Every archive post is labeled so old prices, products and standards are not mistaken for current guidance.
Browse the archive → - 04
Planning and context
The project planner turns dimensions and budget assumptions into a working scope. Market pages add clearly labeled context rather than pretending finance data can choose a floor.
Build a project plan →
The editorial standard
Specific enough to verify.
Good flooring advice should get more useful as you inspect it, not collapse into a confident anecdote.
- Conditions before claims.Room use, substrate and installation constraints come before a product verdict.
- Sources readers can open.Standards bodies, government guidance, certification owners, original datasets and current product documents are preferred.
- Personas are disclosed.The named modern voices are editorial devices—not staff credentials, licensed professionals or evidence of fictional jobs.
- History is labeled.Archive pieces keep their dates and context; ultra-thin fragments remain preserved but are removed from the current recommendation index.
- Uncertainty stays visible.A test method is not stretched into a universal performance promise, and a national survey is not a forecast for one house.
Why preserve the old web?
Because flooring has a memory.
The restored archive centers on Floor du Jour writing originally published by Steve Simonson and captures the rise of laminate, bamboo and online floor shopping; the language of brands and retailers; installation debates; product failures; and the internet culture around a building material most people notice only when something goes wrong.
Preservation is not endorsement. Original pages can contain dead products, dated advice, period pricing and opinions we would qualify differently today. The date and archive label are part of the content.