Planning to sand and refinish hardwood floors is tough, without knowing how long it takes to sand a floor. The answer to this question might surprise you!
As a general rule, it takes 4-7 hours to sand a wooden floor in an average-sized room. People with less experience may take 50 to 100% longer. Many factors can affect this timeline, including the condition of the floor, the size of the rooms, and the abrasives used.
You know, as I sit here in my garden, on this sunny afternoon, it has just hit me. It’s difficult to come up with a rock-solid way to calculate how long your floor will take!
This isn’t the first time I have thought about it. Far from it. As you can imagine, I am trying to work this out daily.
When I am writing a quote to send through to a client, or even when I have finished the first day of work and I’m trying to re-assess how long the floor will take from that day onward… It’s really hard!
What’s more, I get it wrong… a lot. Sometimes it is because I am over-optimistic, and I think it’s going to be easy, but then it ends up being quite hard.
Other times I am not looking forward to the job because the floor is in such a bad state and there are cast iron radiators everywhere! I turn up, and it sands off like butter.
On a side note, I attempted to sand and refinish a 400-square-foot floor in one day. Here is how it went:
As you can probably see, there are a lot of factors that will determine just how quickly you will be able to refinish your floors. However, if you read on, you will find a guideline on how long it takes to sand a floor.
Hiring professionals to sand your floors.
Some homeowners may be able to invest some money into getting their floors refinished professionally. If this is you, good for you, you can expect a very good finish and a much shorter time to completion. The bigger the floor is, the more labor a company might add to the project, speeding up the time to completion.
It is a rare occasion that a floor sanding and refinishing job (as opposed to floor fitting or lacing in) will take longer than five days.
Having given it some thought, this is how I would work it out. 1 day per room, with a minimum of 1 day, but they may finish a day early. LOL, I bet that makes zero sense.
Any floor is going to take a minimum of 1 day. And generally, you can add a day per room, but they may get that done a day early. So four rooms will take 3-4 days, five rooms 4-5 days. This isn’t a hard and fast rule.
If you have five rooms with oak that is in great condition and you don’t want it stained. They may get that finished in 3 days. Heck, I know guys that could get that done in 2.
If you have particularly large or small rooms, you could change that to 250ft² (25m²) per day.
Tackling your floors yourself.
When sanding and refinishing your hardwood floors yourself, it can be much harder to calculate how long it will take. To come up with a super simple answer, take the above calculation and double it.
That sounds excessive, but I think that’s optimistic for DIYers. It is very easy to go on for longer.
Rental sanding machines are much less powerful than professional sanding machines. The abrasives you get in rental shops tend to be a lot less effective, also. Trade abrasives are usually made of zirconia or ceramic, whereas DIY abrasives are made of aluminum oxide (fairly soft and wears out quickly) or silicon carbide (very hard, but smashes to stay sharp, then wears out fairly quickly).
Even if you had the same tools and abrasives we use and someone stood over your shoulder telling you what to do, you cannot be as fast due to practice and experience. Floor sanding is a very high-touch job. Experience breeds speed and confidence, and confidence itself breeds speed.
Bare in mind: more days renting machines means higher total costs. Whereas professional sanding and refinishing services are priced on square footage.
I have written a blog post fully explaining all the costs of sanding and refinishing hardwood floors. I also added a cost calculator, to calculate professional and DIY refinishing costs; you can check it out here.
Other things that can affect the time to completion
Unevenness
If the floor is uneven, you will need to remove much more material to return to that clean flat surface. You could leave it uneven, but that would involve using a hand sander to get into those dips. That will not save you any time. Floors that are cupped come under this category.
Previous finish
How long does it take to sand a floor if it’s covered in carpet glue? Let me tell you, a lot longer! If you are lucky enough to have a floor that has been oiled. Congrats. That stuff is going to sand off like nothin’. Whether it’s penetrating oil like Bona Craft Oil, Magic Oil, Or Loba Impact Oil, or a hardwax oil such as Osmo Polyx Oil, Bona Hardwax Oil, and Rubio Monocoat. Any of these products, made of vegetable oil, are not tough. I have mentioned this on other parts of my website before. I am just not a big fan of vegetable oil floor finishes.
If you are unlucky enough to have a prefinished floor with an “aluminum oxide” finish. Prepare for tough times ahead, Ali-Oxide is extremely tough, and the abrasives tend to skate over the surface. A cupped floor with an aluminum oxide finish… oh man.
Damage
Many types of damage might sink into the surface and cause an increase in sanding time. The first is the dents. Deep dents from dropping heavy items or even just from stiletto heels can mean having to remove lots of wood from the surface of the floor, just like mentioned above. UV damage penetrates deep into the wood. UV damage is the lightening (or sometimes darkening) caused by sunlight. Many believe it’s the finish that has been UV damaged and not the wood. However, UV damage not only affects the surface of the wood, but it can penetrate quite deeply. Again, meaning more material needs to be removed.
If the finish has worn off the surface and the wood has greyed as woods tend to do over time. This can take more time to sand off than if the old finish protects it. Like UV damage, this penetrates fairly deeply but is caused by water and air exposure. It also needs deep sanding to get clean.
The type of wood
Oak (which accounts for a huge majority of floors in the US) is usually very nice to sand, it has the perfect properties. Some pines sand off easily and some are very tough, like Heart Pine (Pitch Pine for the UK folk).
There are very hard woods like Jarrah and Rhodesian Mahogany which take a lot of sanding to get that material off.
You also get woods that work well with the coarse abrasives but can be a real pain during the finer grits like Teak. As well as woods that don’t react well to coarse abrasives but for some reason, sand off very well and easily with higher grits, such as Wenge and Panga Panga.
I have sanded oak floors that are over 100 years old. The oak begins to petrify over time. In that instance, one room has taken me all day to do the 36 grit sanding to get it clean and flat just in one 200 square foot room. You can ask any pro, and they will tell you about some nightmare jobs where the floor was just so hard to sand, and it took such a long time.
The number of rooms
You can have a small total surface area to sand, but if it’s in a lot of tiny little rooms and hallways, it’s going to add extra time in edging, but also shorter passes with the big machine.
I hope I have given you some ideas for working out how long your project is going to take. If you feel I have missed anything, or there is something I could add to this page to answer this question better, please let me know in the comments below!
Are you just about to start your floor sanding and refinishing project? Check out my free Tutorials to get a better idea and game plan for what you’re going to do.
Just wanted to thank you for writing this article!
Aww thanks, it’s rare to get just a thank you and not a paragraph requesting help LOL
Hi, we have a vertical bamboo, lots of scratches , not really deep, from pets and some small dents, do I need to start with a 40 or can I start with a 60? Which grit sequence would you suggest?Thanks
I often suggest starting with a 60 and seeing if it works well, if not drop to the 40
Hi Ben, I’ve recently had an unfinished engineered Oak installed in my living room. I had it finished with HardWax oil by Treatex. The finish was clear matt. Its been down a month now but unfortunately we think the clear matt doesn’t work and we’d like to change it to a satin/gloss finish. Firstly, is it possible and secondly is it easy to do? What would you recommend, buffing it with a machine and then using a gloss finish product or a re-sand and basically start again?
Ben, thanks for all of the good information! I bought a 120-year-old house in a a small town in Northern Florida. It has pine floors in the bedrooms that don’t quite qualify as heart pine (pitch pine). I am judging by the number of rings per inch. They are old and better grade than we currently can get without paying a fortune. The living, dining and hall areas are oak that I am pretty sure are live oak, which is and was abundant here. It borders on criminal behavior how they treated the floors when they carpeted. At some point wood floors were considered a sign of poverty. They nailed tackless striping on the edges and put staples all over to hold the padding in place. The breakfast area adjacent to the kitchen had a melamine flooring nailed every 4-inches all over it and some linoleum glued to that. How would you treat the nail holes? The floor will have a bit of “character” as we say here but nonetheless, I would like to accent the beauty of the floor and minimize the abuse it was subject to.
Advice needed. I have a 70’s paraquat floor. Would you recommend sanding and re varnishing or carpet over floor. Floor area is 11’x12′.
If sanding is it easy to do?
Do you have any recommended professional sander details in West Midlands?
I am really enjoying your informative videos and your website. We are about to finish a renovation project on our farmhouse. We have put down 1,900 sq ft of new 3/4” x 2 1/4” red oak.
New sub floor And the floors are very flat and level. They were nailed down. I understand that need 3 grit sizes are needed. I plan on finishing with 100. Should I start with 60 and then 80 and then 100?
I do not plan on any stain and 3 coats of polyurethane. Your thoughts appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
Sounds like a good plan. Make sure you rent a finishing sander to get it perfect
The apartment I need to sand is one large room, but I don’t want to have to move the furniture out of the apartment. Can I push all the furniture to one side, sand and refinish the floor, and then do the other side? Will there be an obvious line? I don’t plan on staining it, just sanding and sealing.
Very informative information. i know detailed information about different types of flooring. could anyone share information for the same. i would really appreciated if someone could assist me.
What do I do if there is one coat of paint on the floor that I’m trying to refinish it has a coat of a primer on it I am using a drum sander and will try the diagonal approach But is there anything else you do particularly if there is paint on the floor
Just sand it as normal. Sometimes it can be a bit gummy but its just par for the course.
Is there a way for a DIYer to know the type of wood they’re sanding? Is it even necessary to know that in terms of how one it will take?
it can make a difference to how long it will take. As for how to identify the floor, that’s a whole blog post in itself and definitely one I need to write. Sorry I dont have a better answer.
Hello – thanks for all the great info! We’ve just laid a reclaimed Victorian pine floor in an attic conversion. It’s been sanded and finished and I don’t like the finish sat all. It’s gone so orange even though it was called a ‘natural’ finish. Is it going to take a long time for me to sand it back again? I think we need lye to neutralise the orange. Thanks so much in advance
You shouldn’t need to neutralise it with lye. If anything I would maybe change to an invisible finish like Blanchon Bare Timber or Pallman Pure.
If its just been sanded, it shouldnt be too difficult to strip the finish off, unless they sanded it really badly. But it also depends on the size of the floor.