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Warm herringbone wood floor glowing in evening light in a London snug

The Decision Every Floor Ends With

Oil or Lacquer: Choosing Your Wood Floor Finish

Every sanded or new floor ends with this choice. We apply both every week, so here's the honest difference, not the sales version.

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Two Philosophies, One Floor

One Lives On the Wood. One Lives In It.

Lacquer (you may know it as varnish) sits on top of the timber as a hard, protective skin. We apply it as three coats. It shrugs off daily life, heels, chairs, dogs, spilt drinks, and it needs almost nothing from you beyond sensible cleaning. Its honest weakness: when it finally wears through, there's no patching it invisibly, the floor wants sanding again. The water-based lacquers we mostly use are low odour and let the wood keep its natural colour rather than yellowing it.

Oil soaks into the timber and hardens inside it. We apply it as two coats. The wood looks and feels closer to bare timber, matt, warm, touchable, and scratches tend to whisper rather than shout. Its honest demand: it wants feeding every year or two. In exchange, you can top it up and repair worn patches without a machine ever coming back into the house. The pub floor in this real job of ours was revived exactly that way, no sanding at all.

The Honest Shorthand

Choose By How You Live, Not How It Looks On Day One

Both finishes look beautiful the week they go on. The difference shows in year three. So we ask about your life, not your taste: kids and dogs thundering through a hallway usually point to lacquer's toughness. A living room where you want the timber itself to be the star, and you don't mind an afternoon of maintenance every year or so, points to oil. Rental property? Lacquer, almost always: tenants don't feed floors.

  • Toughest against daily wear: lacquer, three coats
  • Most natural look and feel underfoot: oil, two coats
  • Repairable without re-sanding: oil
  • Lowest ongoing effort: lacquer
  • Hard-working commercial spaces: commercial-strength two-pack lacquer, the spec we use on pubs and school halls

Whichever way you lean, nothing is committed from a chart. You choose from real samples, free of charge, and we confirm with a patch test on your own boards before the final coats go on, the same way we handle colour.

Keeping It Beautiful

The Finish Is Only Half the Story. Care Is the Other Half.

Every finish we apply comes with plain instructions for looking after it: what to clean with, what never to use, and when it will want attention. The right care products, the same ones we use on our own jobs, are in our shop. A floor that gets the right soap and an occasional feed will outlast one that gets supermarket spray and neglect by years, whatever the finish.

And this page's advice works the other way too: if your existing floor is looking tired, the finish might only need topping up, not sanding off. That's a much smaller bill, and we'll tell you straight on the free site visit.

Straight Answers

Finish Questions, Answered

Can I change from oil to lacquer, or the other way round?
Yes, but only via a full sand back to bare timber. The two systems don't sit happily on top of each other, so a change of finish is a change of floor surface. If you're already booking a sand, it's the perfect moment to switch; if the floor doesn't otherwise need sanding, it's usually worth staying with what you have.
Which finish lasts longer?
They last differently. Lacquer is harder wearing day to day, but when it does wear through, the fix is a re-sand. An oiled floor needs feeding every year or two, but because you can top it up and spot-repair it without machines, a well-kept oiled floor can go far longer between sands. Discipline beats toughness: the finish that gets looked after is the finish that lasts.
Can a worn lacquered floor be re-coated without sanding?
Sometimes, and it's well worth asking before you book a full sand. If the existing lacquer is intact, dull but not worn through, we can key the surface with a buffer and lay a fresh coat over it. Once the wear has gone through to bare timber anywhere, it's too late for that and the floor needs sanding.
Does the choice change the price of my sand?
Not usually at the standard specification: our sanding rates include the finish, three coats for lacquer or two for oil. Where the price moves is with the specification, for example stepping up to a commercial-strength two-pack lacquer for a pub or a school hall. Whatever you pick, you choose from real samples and we patch test on your own boards first, free.
What would you put on your own floors?
Honestly, it depends on the room, which is exactly the advice we give clients. For a hard-working family hallway we'd lean lacquer and forget about it. For a living room where the wood is the point, we'd oil it and enjoy feeding it. There's no wrong answer, only the wrong finish for how you live.

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See Both Finishes On Real Wood

Samples in your hands, a patch test on your own boards, and the right answer for how you live.

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