You may be interested in a home with hardwood floors that are not to your taste or have realized that a different shade of wood would fit in better with your style. is you can usually change the color of your flooring if you want to!
When you refinish your floors, you can change the color of your flooring. Most hardwood floors can be made darker, lighter, redder, or anywhere in between. If your flooring is solid hardwood, it can be sanded and refinished in a different stain for a different appearance. Engineered hardwoods can be refinished under certain circumstances while laminate flooring should just be ripped up and replaced with laminate in another style.
Refinishing hardwood floors involves sanding the floors, typically three times, to ensure your hardwoods are smooth and will properly accept the stain for a better and longer lasting look. The wood should look like new, raw hardwood once this is done.
Next, a stain is added. If you decide to go “natural”, then you can skip staining. Stains come in all shades, light or dark or red tones such as mahogany. Every wood floor is different so you will need to test the stain you have chosen on your floor to make sure that it looks the way you would like. Choosing a stain based on how it looks on the can or a catalogue is not an adequate representation of how the stain will look on your specific floors.
Once your stain has been chosen and your floors stained, the final step will be adding a layer of polyurethane to the wood floor. Each coat takes about 24 hours to dry and usually 2-3 coats are applied to the floors. Floors will also need to be buffed between the application of each additional coat. This will help the floor to be smooth while also allowing the polyurethane to absorb better and last longer.
With polyurethane, you have the option of choosing what finish or sheen you would like your floors to have. They can be satin, glossy, semi glossy, or matte. A satin finish is currently the most popular option, it shows scratches less than a glossier option. If you decided to leave your hardwood looking natural, you would skip a stain and go straight to a polyurethane finish.
Usually the lightest color you can have for your floor is the natural wood color, unless you bleach or whitewash your floor. Most homes have a light-colored hardwood like oak or maple so all colors are available, from light to very dark or red. Homes with Brazilian cherry or Walnut floors have very naturally dark wood, and will be more limited in their hardwood floor colors since it would be very difficult to make these floors appear lighter.
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