Guest Post via Colby Walker, Director of Marketing & E-Commerce at Lumber Liquidators

At Lumber Liquidators, we’ll admit an obvious bias toward hardwood and laminate. Simply put, we think our products will outshine carpet anywhere, anytime. So we decided to check ourselves against the opinions of those in the business of assessing homeowner preferences. We asked more than 100 real estate agents a simple question: Would you rather sell a home with hardwood or carpet?

In the eyes of those who sell homes for a living, wood is the unanimous choice. Why exactly? For one thing, most real estate agents feel that hardwood makes selling a given home a lot more likely. For real estate agents and the sellers they serve, that’s a no-brainer:  Whatever your local market looks like, everyone appreciates a leg up on the competition.

But homes with hardwood aren’t just more likely to sell period; they also sell for more. According to the National Association of Realtors, buyers pay $2,080 more on average for a home with hardwood over comparable properties. Consider our rock-bottom prices to find out just how much your profit margin could be on a hardwood upgrade.

After consulting the real estate agents, we also wondered how much hardwood could spruce up a room in the eyes of the average person. We polled more than 1,000 individuals from across the U.S., presenting them with photos of 10 homes before and after real LL customers installed hardwood. (For thousands of transformation photos like these submitted by actual customers, check out our remodelling page.) Here’s the effect of hardwood on the crowd’s perception of these homeowners:

That’s right: Having hardwood in your home might make a more powerful impression than you think. The crowd perceived hardwood homeowners to be almost one-third more stylish, and 20.5% wealthier. How about 14% happier, and 13.9% more welcoming? For good measure, try 17% smarter on for size: If hardwood provides all these benefits, maybe those with wood floors really are that much smarter (check out a full graphic with more results here). They say there’s no accounting for taste, but in these surveys, we’ve tried to do just that. When it comes to being crazy about hardwood, looks like we’re not alone.