A List of the Different Types of Wooden Floors

1. Straight or Log Cabin. These floors look like a rectangle if viewed from above.
2. Fan. These look like an elongated hexagon if viewed from above. See an example.
3. Arc. In an arc floor, the wood is actually soaked and bent into shape. The best description I can think of to describe it if viewed above would be a racetrack, with flowing corners and no sharp breaks. These are very expensive floors due to all the time required.

Why is each of these better than the previous one? Because it's best to skate in the same direction as the grain (Actually, I don't know if it's the grain as much as the joints in the wood: the fewer you cross, the smoother the ride. However, since the grain runs with the long side of the wood, it doesn't really matter for this discussion.). On an arc-style floor, the direction of the wood is never very different from your travelling direction, while on a straight floor, you only match directions on the straightaways and briefly in the turns at each end.