Floor stain

If you don't know what stain you want, it begs the question "why do you want to stain?" Natural.

Alan,

you really ,really like no stain.

e76,

I stained a prewar building recently using 50% ebony 50% jacobean and it came out beautiful. I wish there was a way to post pictures on here but there isnt.

Also, as far as stain goes in general, every designer I ever work with stains the floor. There is a reason for that.

Yes.

But in this case I apologize for misreading e76's post ... specific color identified, and asking about resale implications. Sorry!

What is everydesigner's reason for staining floors?

They think, and I happen to agree that it just looks nicer. If i look at all the projects I have done the nicer ones are always the ones that have a stained floor. It is just a personal preference, if you like natural thats what you should have

Staining wood makes floors a consistent color over time. For example, a natural maple finish has a pale blond color initially, which can warm to a honey color over time. Also, some woods in their natural finish don't have a consistent graining or color tone which staining remedies.

Separate but related question -- once floors are stained dark, how hard is it to go back? My apartment has parquet that is naturally light but was stained dark brown. There are places in the wood grain that look black.

The floors need to be refinished or replaced. I'd like to lighten them to a honey color, but I'm not sure what my odds are of getting the black lines out of them. I think I'm going to have them sanded and see how the wood looks, with the backup plan of going completely black if the black in the wood grain still shows through. I'm not sure I want honey-colored floors enough to go through the hassle and expense of replacing them.

Generally, unless the wod floor was water popped (i topens the pores and the stain gets deeper) you should be able to sand the color out, I would have someone do a test area, maybe in a closet just to make sure

Sanding dark color out of higher quality wood floors is a little more time consuming, but very doable.

What's the approx. cost to stain a floor?

Anywhere from $2.50 square foot and up. $4 is pretty average, I would say. There are fancier/more environmentally friendly stains that can push material costs up. The lower prices per square foot are probably done by uninsured or less specialized workers.

I have never seen 2.50 a sq ft, maybe to sand and poly with no stain and even then they generally are not high end

$4.00 is much more like it. If you want very dark floors you can waterpop the floor which would be a little more

e76 - I recently stained my floors to a dark wood and i must say i think it looks AMAZING. I live in a pre-war building with herringbone wood floors and it just gives it a very elegant look. I used 50% ebony and 50% jacobean. A professional flooring guy should give you a few options (and i recommend you test on your actual floor) - downside to that is once you have chosen a corner of the apt to test this you have to end up picking one. The contractor did a great job and finished on time. the job came to approximately $4/SqFt.

I paid $4 for sanding and 2 coats of oil based poly. looks awesome.

Thanks for the helpful discussion. We ended up using 3 ebony with 1 pickled oak mixed in which gave us perfect brownish grey we were looking for.