Floor Sanding Acton

What's the best choice of finish for your new hardwood floors?

Your new hardwood flooring is destined to take all kinds of abuse, from animal claws to stiletto heels and everything in between. It will be the hardest working surface in your home and therefore requires a finish that protects and prolongs its useful life and keeps it looking beautiful.

Many hardwood floors now come prefinished, but if you want to do the job yourself and you've just installed unfinished hardwood flooring you'll need to finish the floorboards as soon as possible.

Seal, stain and poly

If you're using a polyurethane finish, which gives a highly durable and long lasting finish to your floorboards, you'll need to use a sealer first. This will help the poly adhere much better and will prevent panelisation, where the poly runs together and forms a sheet across the floor. You can use a stain instead of a sealer as the base coat, but several types of hardwood don't take stain well and you can end up having to go through the process of floor sanding from scratch to undo any mistakes.

Oil or water?

Everyone knows that oil and water don't mix and it's the same with poly. The two types of finish have very different characteristics, so it pays to know which is the right choice to enhance the characteristics of your flooring.

Oil based poly is the right choice when your flooring is a rich wood like a walnut or has a darker stain. It gives a yellowed, amber effect over soft woods like pine, whereas it will add extra depth and colour to dark woods. Oil based poly is also more forgiving of an uneven application and needs fewer coats than water based poly to create an extremely hard wearing finish. Be aware that oil based poly must be allowed to fully cure and can take 12 to 24 hours between coats to dry fully.

Because water based poly lets the natural colour of the wood shine through, it's often the preferred choice of professional floor sanding and finishing companies. It's also the best choice if you have exotic wood flooring, particularly engineered wood flooring. Oil based poly is considered to be the environmentally friendly choice and dries much more quickly than the oil based variety. However, your application needs to be spot on as poorly applied water based poly will show every brush mark.

Whichever poly you choose, when properly applied it will help your hardwood floors look superb for years to come.

With over 20 years of local 
floor sanding experience, 
we're dedicated to making sure 
that your wooden floors always 
get the best possible 
refinishing service.