

And that’s the effect you can get from a standard clear oil or varnish – as time passes it can turn a deeper orange/gold, even a nasty brown. Orange or golden pine isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. What if you want to get rid of that bright orange/gold colour? Once you know what’s what, you can choose your finish: either something to enhance the natural colour or a colourless product. All you do is rub the surface with a damp – not wet – cloth and you get the exact same effect as oiling or varnishing – the colour suddenly shines through. This change in colour is so dramatic that it’s usually best to test how it’ll look finished before choosing an oil or varnish. Testing the colour of your floorboards before finishing them

The minute you apply a clear wood finishing product like an oil or varnish, that warm, attractive natural golden colour will come flooding through. When you sand old pine boards back to the wood they can look very pale, even colourless.

Old boards can cup or arch over time, each board curling up at the edges, which means when you try to sand them you tend to get a thin sanded strip down the middle of each board at the high point, which widens on each pass of the sander as the boards are slowly levelled by the sanding process. The condition of old pine floors is another. You might want to use a wood dye to create a subtler, less in-your-face effect, calming the brightness down a bit, and if it hasn’t already been protected, you’ll want to add a finishing oil or good quality varnish. The paler it is, the newer and less settled-in it looks. You might adore the effect – the real shabby chic ideal – or you may prefer to get rid of the muck and repair any damage, giving it a whole new lease of life as well as a smooth, contemporary look.Ī brand new pine floor, on the other hand, can look pretty raw. Your floor might be reasonably worn, part way between new and aged. If it has lasted this long in one piece, it might well last a great deal longer without falling apart on you. But to you it’s perfect – a living piece of history marking decades or even centuries of human use. It might be stained and dirty, uneven and bent, sometimes more or less black. You might love the hundred year (or much older) patina your old pine boards have acquired through generations of wear. And every stage of the ageing process has its own beauty. One of the best things about wood flooring is that it changes, going through all sorts of fascinating stages over time, depending on its type and location, with an equally wide range of end results. And the choice is often a matter of aesthetics. Some concerns involve floor maintenance, as some floors require little in the way of maintenance, while others require plenty of elbow grease and attention. There’s a variety of flooring ideas and opinions concerning keeping wooden floors looking good.

Horses for courses – The pine flooring aesthetic Wood Database pine page, an excellent resource. If you’re interested in the similarities and differences between soft pines and hard pines, and those within each group, you can’t beat the There are a whole load of different types of pine trees found in the wild, so many in fact that the Wood Database website’s impressively long list is far too detailed to repeat here. It’s useful for all sorts of utility work, a common wood for beams, flooring and structural purposes. Pinus is the species we see most in UK and EU plantations. For a softwood it’s often remarkably resilient and long-lasting, especially in the context of well looked after pine floors. Pine, also sometimes called redwood, is cheaper and more common than traditional hardwoods, ranging from almost white through various yellow shades to a deep, rich red. If you have a pine floor that needs attention, or you’ve been tasked with getting one in apple-pie order for someone else, here’s everything you need to know. Now it’s time to explore the wonderful world of pine. We’ve taken several long, detailed looks at oak flooring, furniture and doors.
