STAINING and Pre-Color Treatments
Applying stain or a pre-treatment to your hardwood floor lets you transform them into something special and unique. Many homes here in Los Angeles have oak floors. If you’re not a fan of natural oak, staining is the answer to completely changing their appearance.
You can get a completely new look that transforms your home without spending a fortune replacing the flooring.
What Exactly Is Staining?
In simple terms, it’s changing the color of your floors. After the floors are sanded down to bare wood, it’s an extra step that can be included before coating them with finish.
Recently, many types of pre-treatments have become available from finishing manufacturers such as Rubio Monocoat. These are applied before the stain goes down—or even without stain. With the mix of these products you have unlimited creative color options.
Why Consider Staining?
The biggest benefit is that you can completely change the look of your hardwood floors. Don’t like the classic oak look? You can stain them to transform the room from traditional to modern to country—or any other style you prefer.
It’s also a great option if you find pet urine or water damage and you don’t want to go to the expense of replacing the flooring. As long as the wood is stable, staining them a dark ebony shade will hide most of the damage.
Why is it so much extra work?
To obtain consistently superior staining results, your floor needs very precise preparation. This involves extra time, care, additional steps, and specialized equipment compared with a natural (unstained) sanding and refinishing process.
On a natural floor, the sanding sequence is less technical. The belt sander and edger leave different sanding patterns (straight vs. circular) that are blended with a buffer. When finish is applied, you’d only notice faint marks in ideal light at knee level.
But if you put stain on that same floor, the pigments highlight edge marks.
To eliminate those marks, these are the five extra steps that need to be done:
EXTRA STEP 1
Planetary sander
with fine
sandpaper
A special planetary sander is used to fine-sand the entire floor, up to the perimeter. There may be multiple passes depending on the floor. This ensures a consistent, very fine sanding pattern across the entire area.
EXTRA STEP 2
Handheld random
orbital sanders
on perimeter
Random-orbital palm sanders are used around the edge where the planetary sander can’t reach. Then we hand-sand all corners and tight areas the machines miss.
EXTRA STEP 3
Tape off areas
that won’t
be stained
With sanding complete, areas that won’t be stained—like transitions and carpet edges—are taped off to protect them. The last thing you want is stain on your carpet, tile, or vinyl.
EXTRA STEP 4
Water pop the
floor to raise
the grain
Water-popping raises the grain, removes any last trace of sanding marks, and ensures the stain goes down evenly. It also gives the floor a richer, deeper color. Water-popped floors are extremely delicate—any compressed fibers from walking on them the wrong way will leave marks and require a re-sand.
EXTRA STEP 5
Finally the
floor can be
stained
Now the stain goes on. It must be applied quickly and evenly—no lap marks. The whole team has to work efficiently while avoiding compression marks on the water-popped floor. This is the most demanding step.
With those steps completed, we wait for the stain to dry—anywhere from 6 to 24 hours. This depends on room humidity, airflow, and whether it’s an oil-based or water-based stain. Once it’s fully dry, the finish can be applied.
It’s clear why a professionally stained floor costs more: it’s nearly twice as much work. But the outcome is worth it.
Choosing a Stain Color
Whether your preference is dark floors, light floors, reds, grays, or browns, you’ll have no trouble finding a color that perfectly matches your home’s style.
There are a lot of colors and shades to choose from.
Rubio Monocoat Colors
Rubio Monocoat is a one-coat, eco-friendly finish system—our favorite coating to use. You can use the oil only, or apply a pre-color treatment first for deeper, darker, or two-tone effects. Below are the available colors. They can be mixed and matched for unlimited shades…
The colors above are the Rubio Monocoat oil colors—the one-coat finish system that goes on top of the wood.
You can expand the range to unlimited shades by either applying a Pre-Aging treatment or PreColor Easy to the wood first…
When we come out to provide an estimate, let us know you’re considering this option and we’ll share more details. We have a large collection of stain samples for you to review. You can choose your favorites and see how they look next to your furniture and fixtures.
We can also make stain samples directly on your floor so you can see exactly how your finalists will look before you decide…
DuraSeal Stain Colors
If you want a more traditional stain that works with a surface finish, then DuraSeal is a great choice. Each color can be mixed for unlimited options…
If you’d like help choosing a stain color, we’re more than happy to lend our professional expertise.
Just ask us when we come out to provide you with your quote.
PDFs to download...
What Color Should I Stain My Hardwood Floors?
This is one of the most common questions we get about staining hardwood floors in Los Angeles, so we wrote a PDF guide to help answer it in detail…
pdf Download PDF ArticlePHOTOS from past projects
HAPPY CLIENT feedback
Marcos did an awesome job on our floors. He is honest. He does quality work. He really exceeded my expectations in every way. After our white oak floors were done they were perfect. White background with grey LOBA stain was perfect. He is exceptional! I would definitely hire him again for my next house.Rich T. - Santa Monica, CA | 5 Star Review on Yelp
