The answer is usually YES!
Many homeowners don't realize that you can change the color of hardwood flooring when you refinish your floors. Yes, it's true…you can go light or dark or red tones or anywhere in between. Most are pleasantly surprised it doesn't matter if you are going light to dark or vice versa.
If your hardwood floors are dull, scratched, and looking old, it's probably time to refinish them. According to HomeAdvisor, the typical price range to refinish hardwood floors is between $1,074 and $2,485, with the national average at $1,757. This comes out to $3 to $8 per square foot, including materials and labor.
Luckily, you have options other than leaving the floor as it is or replacing it. The best way to refinish wood floors without sanding is to use a technique called screen and recoat. This involves scuffing up the finish with a floor buffer and applying a refresher coat of finish.
Overall, you can stain hardwood floors darker without sanding as long as you clean, degrease, and buff the hardwood floor before applying the wood stain. All of these will ensure that the floor is ready to absorb the wood stain and that the finish comes out smoothly.
Refinishing Prefinished and Laminated Hardwood Floors
Whether you have traditional hardwoods, prefinished wood, or laminated wood, restoring without sanding is a practical solution. Though you can sand your traditional hardwoods, it's difficult or even impossible to sand prefinished or laminated wood floors.
In general, it will almost ALWAYS be less expensive to refinish your hardwood floors. If you replace them, you need to pay for additional wood as well as ripping up and hauling away existing hardwood.
If you only have some minor scratches and dings or a dull finish, you might be able to simply buff and add a new coat of varnish. But, even if your floors need a complete makeover, refinishing hardwood is a very manageable and rewarding do-it-yourself job that can save a lot of money.
Installing hardwood flooring averages between $6 and $12 per square foot. On average, wood flooring costs between $3 and $7 per square foot for materials and $3 to $5 per square foot for labor. An estimate for installation of 1000 square feet of hardwood flooring runs between $6,000 and $12,000.
Because when a hardwood floor starts to show wear and tear, you can refinish it and in so doing, revitalize its look and performance. Make no mistake, however: Sanding, staining, and sealing a wood floor takes time and effort. It's a demanding project, even for a veteran home handyman.
Whitewashing hardwood floors costs $2 to $7 per square foot and requires sanding to remove the old finish and then applying a light wash and clear polyurethane topcoat instead of a darker stain.
Please note that refinishing hardwood floors gray is challenging and should be handled by an expert, especially one with experience in gray and white washed floors. First, the sanding must be immaculate. Stain should be consistent and applied in strips to avoid any cross-grain color-variant lines.
Snap together floors are designed for floating installation and therefore are always engineered structure. Although engineered wood floors come in 2 types of structures T&G (tongue and groove) or Snap Together (click lock), you can install a snap-together floor without any glue.
Hardwood floors are one of the best flooring options for homeowners looking to increase the resale value of their home, with hardwood typically yielding around a 75% return on investment.
Applying a revitalizer gloss is the simplest and cheapest way to refinish hardwood floors. This approach works best on floors that only have surface-level scratches and other minor wear and tear issues. You can get the job done without the need for equipment rentals or hard-to-find materials.
The hardwood floor refinishing process is easier and less expensive than sanding down to bare wood and takes less time. In a few hours, your floors will look as good as new. The job requires using a buffer, which you can rent at a home center, and a vacuum to suck up dust.
Takeaway: Your worn down pre-finished hardwood flooring can be refinished up to 5 times. You can change the color of the entire floor each time that it's completely refinished. Leave the bevel in the floor and DO NOT have the bevel filled. Pre-finished hardwoods show scratches more than site-finished hardwoods.
Mid-toned brown shades would be a better fit. For a modern, bold sleek contemporary design style, rich red hues would be very out of place. Ebony, white, or one of the various grey shades would be much better suited.
Chemical stripping
One option is using chemicals to strip the finish on your floor away, taking the wood back to its original state prior to having a finish added. This is done using a solvent, or some kind of caustic solution which is applied using a paintbrush and left to work its magic.
Lumber Liquidators shares were slammed in March 2015 after a “60 Minutes” report alleged that Chinese-made laminate flooring from Lumber Liquidators installed in many American homes contained far higher than accepted levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.