With the boom experienced in wooden flooring across the country in recent years a wide variety of providers and installers have come and gone.

Flooring is one of those businesses where you really have to know what you're doing to succeed with word of mouth recommendations being of vital importance. It's also an area where the quality of the product on offer really shows which makes the success O'Flynn's Flooring based in Douglas all the more impressive.

The company was set up by Ray O'Flynn back in 1994 and since then has firmly established itself as an innovative, quality provider of flooring. Based in St Patrick's Woollen Mills the company was founded on an ethos of providing quality product, installed to the highest standards; an approach which has seen O'Flynn's go from strength to strength.

This innovation is reflected in the company's pioneering development of engineered hardwood flooring. Available in a range of timbers including American and European oak, walnut, teak, beech and ash the engineered range is now the bulk of O'Flynn's business.

Ray says that with the growing popularity of wider planks engineered flooring was the obvious direction for the company to take. "There are a couple of reasons why the engineered floors have taken off," he says. "Firstly they are just better proportioned for the wider planks that people are going for these days. The engineered planks are generally between six and eight feet long which looks much better for planks that are say eight inches wide".

The other important attraction of the engineered range is its suitability for under-floor heating. "Everybody is more environmentally friendly these days," says Ray, "and that has seen a big increase in the number of people installing under-floor heating systems. When it comes to hardwood flooring for these systems the engineered option provides much more stability than regular solid options. The planks are 20 mm thick on an 11mm birch plywood layer and are ideal for use with under-floor heating where they can either be glued or floated over the under-floor heating".

The engineered range can also be re-sanded and varnished up to 11 times, giving an incredible 150-year average wearing period. O'Flynn's extensive range of engineered wooden floors has seen the company become a member of Guaranteed Irish since January this year making it the only Guaranteed Irish floor manufacturer.

The company's expansion into engineered hardwood floors is just another example of their commitment to quality and innovation. Back in 1998 O'Flynn's began manufacturing their own floors in order to provide customers with better quality and wider choice of options. Today they offer a huge range of flooring options including renowned parquet floors (woodblock).

If proof were needed of the quality of product on offer, you need look no further than some of O'Flynn's satisfied customers. Among them is St Coleman's Cathedral in Cobh where O'Flynn's installed the Rhodesian teak parquet flooring on under-floor heating. O'Flynn's also manufactured and fitted the internal and external hardwood cladding of the new Cork Airport terminal and all the hardwood parquet flooring in the departure areas, the company's biggest project to date.

These are just two examples of major contracts carried out by O'Flynn's with other high profile clients including Rohcon; John Paul Construction; Sorensen's; John Duffy Design; Barry's pub and restaurant; Carrigaline Court Hotel; East Village bar and restaurant and John O'Sullivan's pub in Douglas.

Ray himself has a wealth of experience in the industry and this commitment to quality is something that can be seen in the workmanship of all the company's staff.