The next step would be to simply use wood sealant. This will provide a water resistant coat and give protection for your hardwood floor, which will allow floor maintenance to be easier. Wood finishing treatments need to be done before sealing the floor. Any decorated or painted wood floors usually require up to five coats of a protective wood varnish. With this procedure you will require no use of the area for a considerable time. And lastly, always read manufacturers recommendations, as they will vary from each other.

Hardwood floor bleaching and tinting

One of the easiest ways that you can change the look of your hardwood floor would be bleaching or tinting to darken or to lighten your basic wood floor tone. By lightening the woods color you could transform an old hardwood floor to a beautiful elegant pristine finish which will blend into contemporary furnishings a lot easier. A lot of old hardwood floors were made out of pine which will give you a warm honey color when you seal it. However in some circumstances the sealed Pinewood will give the glaring and brash look which is an effect that certain types of wood sealants will exaggerate, especially if the sealant contains polyurethane which will in time start to yellow. Bleaching hardwood knocks back the warmth of the pine to the point it begins to resemble a hardwood floor with a more classy appearance. Bleaching hardwood is very extreme as it removes most of the color out of the wood floor. Another alternative to bleaching is using a water-based pigmented varnish. This product will give you the similar effect, but is more expensive than the bleaching.

Lightening alternative for a hardwood floor

Hardwood flooring may be significantly lightened using a process called pickling. The process of this effect is made by rubbing white paint in the grain of the hardwood. You can use any white paint manufacturer, pickling wax or even gessol may achieve this appearance. For pine, diluting the white paint would be the best. If the floor is oak hardwood, the pickling effect is a process of first darkening your wood using a stain, ammonia or pigment. This technique will give you the weathered appearance with the pickling sinking into the wood grain. In order to get a pale pickled oak floor appearance you may bleach a hardwood first. In some wood floor Decor situations you may want to have the natural tone of the hardwood deepened. You have a choice of several tinted varnishes, stains, wood dyes on the market with wood floor color choices which range from mahogany to oak that will give your hardwood floor the seasoned appearance. You can also use these products in some spot applications where you have some new hardwood floor planks that are replacing some old wood floor pieces. Normally not using this type of wood floor treatment will leave the new wood planks to stand out more than the rest of the hardwood. If you need to distress new wood floorboards, you can also apply a darker stain, then slightly bleach and stain again.